Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Ride the lighting...

I used to be scared of lighting. In fact, I was terrified whenever a storm would come through. At my old house in Clayton, the circuit-breaker box was in my room. Every time lightning struck close, I would see the flash and here the "click" of the circuit-breaker at the same time. This combination would keep me petrified for however long the storm would last, and the whole fear was in me for several years...

Until a year ago when I was in my OA Ordeal ceremony. Naturally, we were out in the stix of the camp, which was already in the stix enough as far as most people were concerned. Then in the middle of the ceremony, lighting struck less than a mile away. Then a second time. A minute later, it was raining so hard I couldn't even hear one of the guys talking twenty feet away. This continued for several minutes as lighting continued to strike. During the whole thing, my mind kept drifting back to the story of Jesus calming the storm. Just thinking about it did wonders.

Eventually, someone walked up to the guy talking and told him that the ceremony was pretty much over. It was raining so hard that I couldn't make out the secret word when someone told it to me, even though they said it right into my ear.


Last night, I actually opened my window to watch the lighting. As I thought about the fact that God has control over the lighting, my mind naturally started to drift onward on the subject. Think about it:

He has control over where it strikes, how many volts it possesses, how hot it is, how quick it is, how the sound waves propagate due to the certain temperature, how the sound waves are affected by the air conditions, etc. It's awesome!


I have a new fascination with lighting. ;)

2 comments:

Allie said...

I have always loved storms. I suppose when I was little I would get scared, but I don't remember that. My bedroom is right over our kitchen, and one of the windows is right over the breakfast nook. Whenever it rains, my favorite thing to do is to open the window and sit inside it with my feet on the "roof", just watching the lightning. It's so cool to think about God's control over the lightning. He even knows when and where it will strike.

On Friday night during the Virginia convention, there was one of the worst storms I've seen in a while. My aunt and cousin were over for dinner and a Disney movie, and the storm was so bad, they couldn't even get to their house down the street. The lightning was so dazzling. It would light up most of the neighborhood.

Peter Calamy said...

Like Allie, I love storms, there's something about the incredible power and awesomeness of a thunderstorm. It's weird, but during thunderstorms, I'll go out on my back porch, under the overhang, and just watch and listen and worship the God who is so completely in control of something as magnificent and terrible as that!