A STORM is rolling through my hometown, as I type these keystrokes. Bummer. I need to set up my cameras, to capture the eclipse that starts in a couple of hours.
Lightning just flashed in the east. That means the storm is leaving, I hope. But you can never tell here, in the Heartland. This is where storms begin, out of thin air, before radar gets a clue.
It’s dangerous here, sometimes. But it’s often our fault. We tend to build on the cheap, and with little respect for Mother Nature: houses in the flood plain, and not able to withstand earthquakes or strong windstorms, let alone the tornadoes that tear us up in the spring and summer.
Still, there’s a majesty to this power in the sky and underground—when witnessed in the safety that comes from respect.
We show this respect when we look into the sky during a solar eclipse, and we wear special glasses that filter all light except that orange ball hanging in the black of space.
Today—yesterday to you—everything outdoors seems to cry of a Creator.
Music needs a composer. So do the fading, rumbling drumbeats of thunder I’m hearing now, as they echo from sky to earth.
Surprise in the Bible
I wondered what the Bible says about storms like this, so I googled “what the Bible says about storms.” I found a verse that surprised me.
It didn’t surprise me because it’s in the Bible. It surprised me because of where it is in the Bible.
A Jewish songwriter wrote these lyrics several hundred years before the New Testament characters such as Jesus, Peter, and Paul walked on the land in what is now Israel and Palestinian Territories.
“He calmed the storm to a whisper
and stilled the waves” (Psalm 107:29 NLT).
Doggone. That sounds like Jesus.
“One day Jesus told his disciples, ‘Let’s go to the other side of the lake.’ So they got in the boat and pushed off. As they sailed along, Jesus fell asleep. A windstorm swooped down on the lake. The boat started to take on so much water that it was in danger of sinking. His disciples woke him up. ‘Sir, sir! We’re going to die!’ Jesus ordered the wind and the waves to calm down. That’s what they did” (Luke 8:22-24 Casual English Bible).
Today I will watch the eclipse and feel its awe. Or I may, instead, watch a storm and feel its wind and rain.
Either way, there will be music in the sky.
It will be a song of the Composer.
Still, I’m hoping that today he’ll take requests.
Preview of atlas maps for Luke
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Casual English Bible
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