Tornado

A tornado - or three - blew through Owensboro last Thursday, doing some pretty significant damage to the historic regions of this city. Third Baptist Church had its steeple collapse inward to the sanctuary - a terrible blow that could have been much, much worse considering there were people in the sanctuary who vacated a mere five minutes before the collapse.

That day was a bizarre day in general, and I had intended to publish a blog that night about one of the strange occurrences. It didn't happen; but here it is ...

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By the time I was ready to leave the home of a church parishioner, the rain was dropping in sheets and wind was howling across the eastern hills of Daviess County. I had arrived around 3:30 pm in the afternoon to give a 3rd grade girl a bible – a bible we had intended to give her back in August. Family travels had kept them away from the church and poor excuses and old routines had kept me away from them.

Wyatt – bless his soul – traveled the fifteen or so miles out into the county to visit this girl and her mother – screaming for two-thirds of the journey. Two motives drove me to take him along with me: Anna’s need to prepare our home and a meal for guests and my desire to make this bible presentation as overtly family oriented as possible.

Wyatt was a good companion – only a minor distraction from time to time. Although he did find it terribly frustrating to get a lock on the family cat only to have it evade his affection.

And I can’t say that my attention was always focused. There is a disorienting awkwardness about entering a family’s home under the pretenses of pastoral work. But despite the timid nature of both parties, we made well at conversation.

I was welcomed by a young girl at the door. Her mom had told me that her daughter was terribly excited about this, and as I entered, I wondered what the girl was hoping or expecting. I needn’t wonder long; her eyes spoke truth. She focused her vision firmly on the burgundy book with minor gold lettering tucked into a corner on the front.

I was carrying a mystery of magic – some wonderful book that she knew not much about except that it had deep, profound worth to certain people, I being one of those.

After some good discussion about school and about pets, I asked her and her mom where she liked to read in the house. This inquiry threw her a bit – not sure if that secret was okay to reveal to me, a relative stranger. Her mom encouraged her: “you like to read in here,” (referring to the living room), “and in your bedroom.” Not wanting to gift God’s word to her in a realm that was too personal, I proceeded then and there to briefly express the beauty, truth and marvel that is scripture. “This is a light, a way to see as you journey through life. This is a seed planted, a seed that can grow to produce peace, joy, patience and kindness. It is not an easy book to read. Some of it is quite confusing. But, it is our story. And, if you ever have any questions, you know you can ask your parents. And you can ask Jonathan or me. You can ask your Sunday school teachers.”

After I stammered this out, the girl took the bible in her own hands – clasping it as though it were her highest prize. Before I left, she dug out three other bibles that were buried beneath some other books near a shelf in the dining room. She wanted me to know they had others. And she told me how she had just watched Evan Almighty, and how she knew the story of the ark. “Genesis 6:13,” she said. “That was the verse in the movie. Genesis 6:13.” And with the bible now in her possession, she hunted the chapter and verse down and read in her naively trusting voice, “Then God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and now I am going to destroy them with the earth.”

The mother quickly averted this apocalyptic word by pressing the conversation back to school. The girl: she was delighted, having taken her new book of wonder and utilized a key she remembered from a movie to unlock one of its mysteries.

Yes, it was about that time the storm broke, which took this already surreal moment into the realm of bizarre. Huge sheets of rain flooded the driveway and rolled quickly off the deck onto the ongoing acres.

I realized the chance to escape with Wyatt in a quiet, smooth fashion had come and gone. So rather than waiting out the storm, we made a fool’s attempt to keep Wyatt dry with two umbrellas, two adults and one sippy-cup.

We slipped Wyatt into his car seat fairly smoothly, the large sheets of rain kicking against the stony drive and our legs. I fumbled my way in front of the car and to the driver’s seat, the mother holding one of the umbrellas to the air like an olive branch against a flood.

On the way home, tornado sirens screamed all over the countryside as varying degrees of gray gathered and hurtled their way into the eastern sky. To the west, vaulting clouds of cotton white where trying to climb one another into the highest heavens, and in between the duality of dark and light, a pristine sky of blue stretched north to the Ohio River. To top it all, a rainbow stretched from north to south over a lone farmhouse. It seemed to disappear into my car it was so close.

I think about that drive now. The bible. And that girl.

The rest of the evening has played out with more fury from the sky. Tornado sounds blared all night long – emptying themselves upon the city and county, forcing families to find shelter and refuge against the sinister spiral. Water ran up and down the street, trees shook their arms as if celebrating the long-missed rain with Pentecostal flare.

I wonder: what if that girl truly believed what she read. What if her faith moved that storm up onto our county? Of course, that would be preposterous. But, you have to wonder …

She eyes that book as though it were a truly magical work – something Harry Potter might employ. She remembers some verse, focusing her mind upon it to give her a way to unlock this new gift. She speaks the verse in wonder and trust – letting the story come alive in her mind even as her mom dodges the brutality of it all.

And God hears the story written long ago, lets it come to life again in the heart of a child. And, for a brief moment, the floodgates are unbound, brining a torrent of rain onto the land. God speaks through the flowing river dropping from the sky:

“Yes, girl, that part is true. I came within a hair’s breadth from snuffing out all that ever breathed – like two fingers joined together against the flame of a candle. There was great violence in those days. Still is. Great violence to fill a world full of tears if I let those tears run from my own face. But my tears were too much for me to bear. And so I set limits upon the earth, and I set a bow in the sky – a weapon of war to mark the peace that will rule the day into eternity.”

I wonder.