Girasole

This is my favorite word currently.  It is Italian, and it means, "sunflower." Literally translated, "gira" means "turn" and "sole" means "sun".  So it is like some beautiful advice to "turn to the sun." This word has been on my heart for a while now, and I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it.  This past weekend perfectly encompasses the entirety of what this word means to me.  A bad storm hit my city on Good Friday (an EF4 tornado) and left a lot of people without electricity, roofs, and even homes.  Streets were shut down due to live power lines down across lanes of traffic and other entire subdivisions (like my own) were barricaded by the police for safety reasons.  The damages are still being calculated four days later, but the most certain fact is that no one was hurt.  It is being classified as a miracle, and I have no doubt it was. There is story after story of people who were not home due to random happenstances, or who happened to be in the right room in their home at the right time and just missed being hit.  The storms passed that night, but it rained for the rest of Easter weekend.  However, the rain and cold did not deter the community in the slightest from beginning clean-up.  It was an incredible message of hope, and that to me is the epitome of the whole idea about turning to the sun.  To turn our heads towards the sky and like my friend Von says sometimes, "Spend a little more time looking up." We can look up to know that our God is here with us and trust that He is the one who protected every single person from these storms, just like He is the one who will continue providing for everyone.  We can turn to the sun in hopes that all of these storms will pass, which sounds so cliche, but is also completely true. One of my favorite songs is a Casting Crown with a lyric that totally sums it all up: "I will praise you in this storm."  I think all of us just need something like this to hold onto, and for me, that is girasole.