Shock and Awe

So I went home this weekend to work for my mom and support my Seminary habit. While I have never seen the Disneyland fireworks extravaganza, I have seen fireworks. The drive home put them to shame. I was very thankful for prayer right before driving home. I hadn’t even gotten to the 101/405 interchange before seeing two accidents and hitting traffic. Not my favorite way to start a trip. Round about Santa Barbara the show began.

Most of the time my drives home are moments of reflection, and contemplation, or arguing. I had much to contemplate on the drive home but it kinda got pushed to the side. God was doing some late night artwork in the form of an electrical storm. Lightning alone is somewhat intimidating; it is bright, scary, and can kill you. Yet God was at work lighting up the sky with stroke after stroke after magnificent stroke.

Traveling over Cachuma Pass (shortcut that I take that goes up into the mountains above Santa Barbara) I had the storm displayed before me. Bending arcs, crawling arcs, Arcs that would strike, and then another would 1 second later, but the sky where the first strike was still black because your eyes were still temporarily blind. It wasn’t raining either, and I could still see the stars in the sky. Now and again lightning would arc but not be visible and polarize a white background with black clouds in front. Red tinted strikes, blue tinted strikes. Strikes that would synchronize with the music I was playing.

The teaching part came in 3 different strikes (no pun intended). The first was the fact that I had Tomlin’s Indescribable playing at one point and understood maybe for the first time the truth of that song. The second was a concept of God’s creation from my Pentateuch class and the ‘speaking’ light into darkness. Granted I had headlights, and orange dials showing some light as well as random lights from small towns, but they were pale in comparison. There is only one thing that I know of in human creation that can light up the sky like lightning: It ended one war, was the cause of another that was more of a race, and is in the news on the other side of the ocean. The last part came when I reached Santa Maria and the storm was overhead getting more of the ‘Awe’ part of the storm. Having the world go from dark to daylight to dark again is a little startling, if not creepy. I was reminded of many of the first sayings of angels who appear to people: ‘Do not fear’ when in a more direct meaning awe is a fearful reverence.

I normally get reminders when I have forgotten something…