When you are in the middle of a very erratic season of life where preferred outcomes and emotions rise and fall each day, that is not a good time to make life-altering decisions. If your life looks like a frenetic graph with up and down spikes resembling the needle marks left on a seismometer during an earthquake, step back and try to look at the big picture. The perspective gained from the larger image of chronological time will help you see what can be missed in the blinding emotion of the moment. 

The tremors you are experiencing will not be the final record of your life. They are only reporting what is happening now. There will come a time when the needle on your emotional seismometer will settle down and indicate calm and clarity once again. As devastating as these shakings can be, like natural earthquakes, they don’t last forever. 

When personal earthquakes take place, ride out the shaking with your hope placed firmly in the goodness of God. That is the only safe hope. It can survive any shaking no matter how much destruction takes place.