Thunderstorms

’Tis the season…for thunderstorms! And this month they’ve been all around us…and on us!

I’m actually a lover of thunderstorms. The cloud movement, sudden darkness, flashes of lightning, loud crashes of thunder, whipping wind, downpours of rain, even the power going out!

As a kid, I’d sit on the porch swing of our screened porch and watch with excitement. As an adult, I’ll open the garage door and sit on a lawn chair out of the rain, and pretend I’m a kid on my porch swing. I still love it!

But not as a pilot. Thunderstorms are one of the leading causes of airplane crashes for private pilots. One rarely survives flying in a thunderstorm. It’s one thing to be sheltered by the safety of my garage. It’s another to be in the middle of all that hyperkinetic and megarific electrical energy.

Yes…I made up the word “megarific.” But get this: one burst of lightning, caused merely by the friction of ice particles in a cumulonimbus cloud, can release up to one billion volts of electricity, creating a temperature up to 50,000° F!

Not many airplanes can survive that. Many small single-engine airplanes have inadvertently wandered into thunderstorms, never to be found again! Being in the middle of a thunderstorm without shelter and protection will almost certainly lead to total destruction.

And it’s all because of changes in the atmosphere. Moisture from evaporation and unstable air caused by temperature differences between the ground and sky lift air upward. Friction from ice crystals within those rising clouds then creates voltage differences between the cloud and the ground, and boom—a thunderstorm.

It’s like that in life. Changes in and around us, aging of our bodies and minds, kids growing up, job and career instability, friction and cultural differences, can all lead to thunderstorms in life.

And these too can be massively destructive, particularly if you are caught without shelter and protection.

But God has not left us alone to wander into life's storms.

He’s given us His sheltering Body (the Church), protective families, and Christian brothers and sisters. And especially His Word to help us navigate around the storms, and His Holy Spirit as an active GPS to help us find our way home.

Don’t get caught in a storm without protection. You can’t survive it any better than anyone else. And this is the season for storms. One is coming! Are you settled into the protective measures God has given you? Are you nestled into His church, surrounded by and covered by His people, navigating life from the directions in His Word?

If so, you can pull up a chair and watch the power of the Creator at work while sheltered from the storm’s destructive impact.