Lightning is cool, right?
Cool as long as it only does what we expect it to, right. You know how all the rules say that lightning never strikes twice? Say that to my Uncle Roy (
Roy's Story) who may or may not be related to me. He just shares my mother's maiden name, so I claim him. Roy Sullivan was struck 7 times and finally the paranoia got to him and he took his own life. Roy literally thought God was out to get him. My point is that lighting really does not follow rules so much as it might show a pattern of usual behavior. An average bolt of negative lightning carries a current of 40 kA (kiloampreas) although some bolts can be up to 120 kA, and transfers a charge of 5 coulumbs and 500 MJ (megajoules)or enough energy to power a 100 watt light-bulb for just under two months. The voltage depends on the length of the bolt: with the of air being 3 million volts per meter, this works out at about one billion volts for a 300m (1,000 feet) lightning bolt.
That's a lot of potency.
Recently, my house was struck by one of these billion volt bolts of raw ampage (yes, been using that thesaurus again). It struck the peak of our house just above our daughter's room and traveled down the facia on the eve of the house toward the lights on the front and back porches. Once it got to the corner on the front of the house, it literally exploded chunks of wood, flashing and siding before blowing out the light-bulb in a flash of sparks. The nails holding the aluminum flashing to the facia got so hot that it melted the flashing and it popped off (imagine a line of tiny cigarette burns up and down your metal flashing on your house). The arm that traveled to the back porch made a bigger mess in that it actually caught part of the siding on fire and rained down melted plastic on our back steps. This is what I saw as I awoke from the dynamite exploding in my house. I was asleep on the couch (keeping vigilant watch over my family during a storm :) ) and I sat bolt upright just in time to see the giant sparkler go off on my back porch. "Shazzam", I thought, as I assumed that it hit our back yard or something. As I calmly approached the back door (trotted like a scared little puppy) I told my family that everything was okay, "don't worry, just go back to sleep". It was at this moment that I realized that I left my heart back on the couch where if popped out my chest. I did not have time to go back and get it. Springing into action, I struck out around the house in a zigzag pattern with a flashlight in the middle of a thunderstorm in my boxers to see if my house was on fire because I smelled the electric smoke from the back door. Could not tell much from that quick little flash around the house, but I felt secure enough that the lightning did not do any worse damage. Could not sleep though because I was so charged up from the event.
The next morning, I discovered several burnt our light-bulbs inside the house with many electrical outlets and switches gone bust.
But Wait, this was not supposed to happen! We have a grounding rod that is supposed to direct the lighting bolt's unfettered fury into the ground and away from our home. Well, turns out that the grounding rod worked just fine once the lightning decided to take advantage of it. In the trip it took from peak to dirt, it meandered (so to speak) around our home's electrical system. Our system did not respond very well.
Our system was set up to handle a regulated and managed amount of power apportioned to us by the utility company. The fact that it comes from a utility company says it all. The power is supposed to be for our utilization. When we don't need it, it is supposed to patiently wait in our plugs until we call upon its power. This lightning bolt was very unruly though. It did not follow any of the system's protocols and it did not even behave the way we expect lightning to behave.
It strikes me (I know, I already used one version of that pun, but I could not resist) that we often treat God like we do lightning. We want just enough God to make life fun and easy, but we don't really know what to do when He moves unhindered in our hearts. It blows circuits and makes us weird. You know what I'm talking about; those Jesus freaks that tell other people about God's love in their free time instead of playing video games or watching Family Guy (honestly can't see why any believer would ever endure a show like that). Those are the people who made the mistake of not grounding their lives in reality and managing the amount of God they let in their hearts. Though we don't readily admit it, we all prefer God to play a background role in our lives. We want Him when we need Him and we want Him to sit by patiently and not come out when our friends come over. We treat God more like the deformed basement dwelling son from Goonies than we do the Savior of the Universe. We all know how that movie turned out, right?
My heartfelt prayer for the Tri-state is for us to allow God to breach our systems and blow up our facades.
