How I’m praying for God’s blessing (or curse)

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field… he sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.”
– Jesus (Matthew 13:44)

The largest hurricane in a quarter of a century recently landed.

As one from New Orleans, who lived through Katrina and all that mess…I could empathize.

Last week, the morning before landfall, I wondered, how do I even pray about this? Certainly, things will be a wreck. Certainly, even, some people will die.

But as bizarre as it sounds, good can—and will—come from all of these kinds of bad.

And, as time plays out, that good could very well be better than this momentary bad.

So…should I pray against the happenings now unfolding?

This is the thought I was pondering.

And then it hit me. The only scenario that is truly bad, the only one that doesn’t have enough good to balance it, is the one where we move further away from God.

All else can be fixed, either in this life or the next.

But the one objectively bad scenario is the one where we find ourselves apart from our maker.

So I decided to pray that, whatever happens, it will become the one good thing for all the people who find it.