Acts 27:13 “When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.”

The Apostle Paul was not living in the calm before the storm. He was suffering through the turmoil in the heart of the storm. For a couple of weeks, he and 275 other passengers were stuck on a ship driven and battered by a storm at sea. The crew had lost control to the wind and the waves. They were just trying to keep the ship together. They started to believe that all was lost.

Luke describes the battle with the storm in detail: the unfavorable winds the crew could not fight, wrapping ropes around the entire vessel just to keep it from coming apart, throwing the cargo overboard, then the ship’s tackle, to ride higher and keep from being swamped. The sailors used every strategy they knew just to keep the boat together and afloat.

But the storm was clearly bigger than they were. Passengers and crew lost hope. Not every storm takes us so far to the end of our own abilities and resources. No doubt these sailors had ridden storms out before, storms that didn’t stretch on and on like this. But when they had nothing left, no more ideas, no more tricks up their sleeves, they began to resign themselves to their fate. They would be lost at sea. They had lost hope.

Floods in Texas, New Mexico, and North Carolina recently have destroyed much property and taken many lives. Storms brought incredible amounts of rain in a short time, leaving people little opportunity to escape. Many of those who died were children. Catastrophes like this can be soul crushing. What hope do we have against such powerful forces?

Less literal storms batter us, too. Sometimes I hardly recognize the country in which I live. Some of our best friends and neighbors growing up were people whose political yard signs were exactly the opposite of the ones my parents would have put out in our front yard. So we disagreed politically. That never stopped us from looking out for each other, playing on the same teams, going camping together, or standing up in each other’s weddings. No one would have ever dreamed of vandalism over the difference.

Now the polarization in our country has grown so deep, so strident, so resentful that some family members can’t bring themselves to spend holidays together because of their differences. Some political scientists claim that the competing worldviews are so fundamentally different, so starkly opposed that there can be no more friendly coexistence. One side must win or the other. As the political storms rage in our country, is their hope for our future as the United States? Some think not.

In the sermon at a seminary graduation, I heard the preacher observe that the Lord has a regular habit of bringing his people to this place of no hope, to the very end of their options, to a complete dead end in life. If you and I have experienced it in our life’s storms, we are hardly alone. Abraham and Sarah were well past their child-bearing years when God was still promising them a son. Joseph had no reason to hope he would ever be a free man after years as a slave and then a prisoner. Moses and the children of Israel lost hope of surviving when Egypt’s armies had them pinned against the Red Sea. Jesus’ disciples obviously lost hope in their own storm at sea when they asked Jesus, “Don’t you care if we drown?”

Until we come to this point, we may not fully appreciate, we may not even want, God’s remedy for our lost hope, his answer for our dangerous storm. But here is God’s promise: “Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify me” (Psalm 50:15). He wants to deliver us. The storm makes it possible for us to want his grace, and to see it when it appears. No storm, no matter how big, puts us beyond hope when the God who raises the dead and saves the world is on our side.