I am reading The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger. Some of you may have seen the film of the same title, starring George Clooney. It is the story of the crew of the Andrea Gail, a fishing boat out of Gloucester Harbor, caught in the most horrific storm in the North Atlantic since 1933.

It was October 1991, and I was living in Boston. A few weeks earlier, I had boarded up my windows and battened down everything outside that might blow away in Hurricane Bob. But Bob was nothing compared to the storm that followed, which did not have a name.

It was fierce on the coast of Massachusetts but almost inconceivably violent in the North Atlantic. Winds reached 120 miles per hour and waves reached 10 stories high and even higher at peak. I stayed glued to the weather reports on TV and then on the portable radio when I lost electricity. It was a time of high anxiety, justified when the news came some days later that the Andrea Gail had gone down with all six on board.

Some eight months later I moved to Gloucester, Mass., where the fishing industry is not what it used to be, but still figures largely in the local culture. The parish I served had some members who were fishermen, some who owned boats, some who were in the Coast Guard and had been part of the rescue attempts during that storm. The names of people and places in Gloucester strike a chord of recognition in my memory, so the book is very immediate to me. I lived right on the water and often heard fog horns in the night and woke up to the sound of sea gulls quarreling over their breakfast.

I saw lots of storms in the five years I lived on Cape Ann. Some of them were enough to cause anxiety and were certainly enough to keep me indoors. But many of them, especially the winter storms, were incredibly beautiful. There was something elemental, something so very pure in them. If I had made the necessary preparations, I could pretty well relax and just sit by my window and watch, wondering at the sheer power on display. Firewood, flashlights, portable radio, extra batteries, groceries to last several days, dog food for Spot. But if anyone I knew was traveling, even a few blocks, I was on high alert. I wanted everyone I cared about to stay inside, stay safe, wait out the storm. Time enough to do whatever after the storm was over.

The Perfect Storm brings home the suddenness with which our worlds and our lives can change. Going about our normal business, doing ordinary things—suddenly we may be caught up in forces so powerful and unexpected that they can overwhelm us. The best we can do is try to be ready for whatever life may bring, though we may not know what that may be. And the very best way to be ready is to have a real and living relationship with God. God is the one rock that will not be moved, the one rock upon which we can build our lives and trust that we will remain secure there.

The exterior of our lives may be in upheaval and storms, but the interior can remain firmly fixed and at peace. It is that “peace that passes all understanding,” the peace which Christ gives to those who abide in him and in whom he abides. When the storms of life are raging, he is our peace, our haven.

May that peace be in your heart today and always.

The Rev. Elizabeth Carpenter is rector of St. Anne’s, Damascus