When Lightning Strikes
by
JOYANN DWIRE
“Don’t you know how inconvenient this is, Lord?”
The question summed up my feelings as I watched flames lick at the side of my house. The stark honesty of my question caught me by surprise. I wasn’t dealing with fear or anger or distress. I was irritated that my day had been interrupted by a lightning strike.
Our lives have a lot of interruptions, and we don’t usually like any of them.
“I’m on the phone, don’t interrupt me.”
“I’m talking, don’t interrupt.”
“I’m busy. I can’t be interrupted.”
In my case, I had just settled down for a Sunday afternoon nap when a storm moved in. My head barely hit the pillow when a loud crack made me sit up. Lightning had struck just outside our kitchen window. Within minutes I saw smoke and ran outside to see flames only three feet away from our propane tanks.
Ideally this would be the time for a Christian to thank God for His protection. No one had been injured. There had been no explosion. And while the rain soon soaked me to the skin, it also served to hold the flames down.
Instead, as I waited for the fire department to arrive, I went through all the usual questions: “Why did you let this happen, God? Don’t you control the weather? Couldn’t you have redirected the lightning?”
And then came the other question. The one that revealed my true human nature:
“God, don’t you know how inconvenient this is?”
As Christians we sometimes expect our lives to be smooth sailing. However, a walk through the Bible will show us that even the faithful had interruptions. Joseph’s youthful exuberance was disrupted by his brothers selling him into slavery. Noah’s life was interrupted by a request to build an ark. God intruded into Moses’ life with a burning bush and a commission to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. The disciples’ lives were interrupted by the crucifixion (though we all know that ended well).
Name any Bible hero and you will find his or her life interrupted either by disaster or God’s call -- and often it was difficult to tell the difference. Just look at King David. As a teenager, he was anointed by Samuel to be the next king of Israel. Imagine the excitement and anticipation David must have felt. But years passed, and instead of becoming king, his life was threatened by King Saul. Even after he became king, David’s life was interrupted by the betrayals of a trusted friend and his own son, both of which sent him running for his life.
And like us, he complained. In fact, there are a lot of complaints in the Psalms. Take a look at Psalm 55. David’s son was in rebellion against him, and once again his life was in danger.
In verses 2-3 David gives in to his human nature and voices his complaint.
“Hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
because of what my enemy is saying, because of the threats of the wicked; for they bring down suffering on me and assail me in their anger.” (NIV)
David’s situation was a distressing interruption of his life, and for a moment he took his eyes off God. The fear and anguish were more than he could bear.
“Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest” (verse 6).
Haven’t we all felt like this at one time or another? We want to fly away like a dove, or maybe hide like the ostrich with its head in the sand. When the lightning struck, I would have preferred either of those options to dealing with the insurance company and contractors. Like David, I had taken my eyes off God.
David didn’t forget God for long. As he began to pray for vindication, his eyes turned once again to the God of his fathers, and his faith was strengthened.
“As for me, I call to God, and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning and noon, I cry out in distress, and He hears my voice” (verses 16-17).
My thought process was similar. After I got the complaint out of my system I, too, turned to God in prayer. Perhaps not as quickly as David did, but eventually my thoughts turned from the inconveniences of the fire and onto the God who allowed the fire to happen.
When I began to look at God’s protection, I discovered that He had redirected the lightning bolt. A few feet to the left and the lightning would have struck the propane tanks with disastrous results. Instead, it struck the ground wire, traveled through the ground and burned a hole in the propane line. This allowed the leaking propane to fuel the fire, but the pressure pushing gas through the line also served to keep the fire pushed up and away from the tanks.
Now that my eyes were properly focused, the list of things to be thankful for grew.
The power in that single bolt of lightning was breathtaking, and without exception, every repairman said exactly the same thing: “I’ve never seen anything like it.” In addition to the damage to the propane line and the siding where the fire burned, the current also knocked out our phone lines and followed the underground electric line to the barn. Here again was a reason for praise: the surge fried an outlet in the barn, but the breaker tripped before the freezer that was plugged in to the outlet was damaged, and more importantly, before it could cause a fire.
God was surely with us. By 9:30 the next morning, the electricity to the barn and telephone service had been restored, the gas line repaired, and the contractor’s estimate was on its way to the insurance company. The hassles I had dreaded never materialized. But it wasn’t over yet.
Thursday morning we had no water. When the plumber pulled the line from the well he discovered that the lightning had followed the waterline from the house to the well. It cracked the old lining in the well and sliced the waterline in half. Apparently the secondary line was able to carry the water for three days until the pump lost its prime, but thank God it hadn’t damaged the pump.
It was a four-day disruption of my life, and though I didn’t realize it at the time, these simple inconveniences were preparation for larger interruptions yet to come. The attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 interrupted all of our lives, especially in New York, Washington, D.C. and my hometown of Somerset, Pennsylvania. I was at work in Somerset that morning when Flight 93 crashed just ten miles away, and with all of America I felt the shock and horror of the attack.
Two months later, my mom fell and broke her hip, and I became her caregiver for the next six months. Several years later she had a stroke, and I once again cared for her until the Lord took her home. Major interruptions. But I was able to feel God’s grace, thanks in part to what I learned through the lightning strike.
Was God in control of the lightning? He certainly was. Could He have kept it from striking our house at all? Of course, He could have, just as He could have prevented Absalom and Ahithophel from rebelling against David. But as a result of his experience, David realized his dependence on God; his faith was strengthened; and we have one of the most beautiful promises in Scripture.
“Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall” (Psalm 55:22).
That verse, the result of David’s own test of faith, has been a comfort to millions of Christians down through the centuries.
Whether the interruption is a lightning strike, a child’s illness, a marriage in shambles, a parent’s ill health or a terrorist attack, it’s always inconvenient. It’s always distressing. And yet it always has the potential to strengthen our faith. It’s hard to think about it that way. We want answers. We want explanations. But we don’t always get them. Like David, we need to rest in the assurance that God is in control. He sees the past, present and future, and our lives are in His hands.
The lightning was troublesome. It was an interruption of my precious schedule. But perhaps we all need to have our schedules interrupted now and then to draw our eyes and our hearts back to God.
Copyright 2023 Joyoann Dwire All Rights Reserved
