No contest

I was woken up at 2:00 a.m. to howling winds that sounded like a train and rain lashing against the windows on all sides. It's the kind of storm that is almost impossible to sleep through, ignore, or drown out. The only option is to sit and listen in awe, try to figure out if there is a tornado warning, and hope for the best. In our case in the wee hours this particular morning, there was in fact a tornado warning.

Half asleep, we dragged our protesting dog Maximus to the bathroom and set up camp. In the end we only stayed in our cozy (tiny and cramped) guest bathroom for about ten minutes, and then basically went back to our normal lives and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn't, however...go back to sleep...and so here I am, at 3:24 a.m., writing about it. (This is after re-arranging ALL the furniture in the guest bedroom in an attempt to expend enough energy to get tired enough to fall back asleep.)

For those few minutes we were in the bathroom just waiting, helpless and human, I couldn't help remembering something the Bishop said in one of his sermons I listened to a while back: "God is love, but he is also a lot of other things". Just to think storms like this that send us running to our bathroom tubs don't even begin to show us the power of the pinky finger in God's right hand. I couldn't help but smile as I sat waiting in the bathtub with my pillows, blankets strewn everywhere looking like I was about to go bobsledding, Max lying on his huge pillow literally taking up the rest of the bathroom wondering what the heck was going on, and my husband sitting funny on the toilet with the laptop trying to find out. As we listened to the thunder roar, the lightning strike, the winds moan, and the rain slash, I thought, "man, all I know is I'm sure glad THAT God is on MY side."

"...And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power?” Job 26:14