He is My Strength in the Storm.

Last week we were away on holiday in Dorset, and one morning we drove down to West Bay, a little fishing town tucked under the golden cliffs of the Jurassic Coast.

I think we caught the tail end of a storm, because the wind coming off the sea was something else. The kind of wind that you can't breathe in when you're facing straight into it.

We let the children out onto the shingle, and I stood watching Jesse (who's one and a half) try to make his way across the beach.

He would lean forward, set his little face, and push, and the wind would simply hold him there. Sometimes it pushed him back a step. He was working so hard to move and going almost nowhere, until eventually he just reached up for my hand.

We crossed the beach together after that, him leaning into me, both of us braced against the same wind.

So often, when life turns stormy, the only prayer I can find is, "Lord, make it stop." Calm the wind. Still the sea. Change the weather. There is nothing wrong with that prayer. Jesus Himself calmed a storm for frightened friends.

But sometimes the wind keeps blowing. The diagnosis stands. The bills still come. The grief does not lift on our timetable. If calm is the only answer we are willing to accept, we can miss the quieter thing God is doing right in the middle of it.

He does not always promise to remove the storm. He promises to hold us up inside it.

That is what Isaiah heard the Lord say to a frightened people: "Don't you be afraid, for I am with you... I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness."

Not, I will end every hardship, but I will uphold you. I will be the hand you reach for. I will be your strength when your own runs out.

So if you are bracing against something today, leaning hard into a wind that will not let up, you do not have to cross it on your own strength. You were never meant to.

Reach up. The same God who can calm any storm has promised to be your strength inside this one.

He is my strength in the storm, and He can be yours too.