#1 – Letters to my children series
Photo by Frank Cone: https://www.pexels.com/photo/lightning-2373897/
Dear Sons and Daughters:
I don’t recall who told me this story, but I believe it was your Nana. What I do remember was seeing the two-foot-wide black burn marks wrapped around the rooms halfway up the wall of your great grandmothers Pine Lake home. It was the house at Pine Lake Alberta. The place I spent all my summer vacations as a child.
It was a hot summer day at the lake. Black clouds rolled in. Your great grandparents smelt the ozone, that scent like fresh laundry just taken down off the clothesline. They heard the thunder rumble, a sound associated with the wide-open spaces of the prairies. We used to count the seconds between this sound and the lightning too see how many miles away the lightening was.
On this occasion, so I was told, there was no time. No time at all, for the lightning zipped through the grass and hit the lightning rod. This time the lightning rod failed as it ushered the electric shock up through the window and into the bedroom, around the bedroom walls into the living room, and out the front door.
The sound was so loud the guest sitting in the living room lost their hearing and was deaf for three days afterwards, or so the story goes. Ginger, the dog, was the one who suffered most. She was terrified of lightning storms for the rest of her life and would run and hide, poor thing.
What happened? A freak of nature your Nana said. Lightning was drawn in by the lightning rod and along the copper house wiring. In it’s wake it melted the wire window screen, ate the copper within the electrical wires, and left a two-foot-wide black burn mark halfway up the walls. The bonus was when the television exploded (those were the days of black and white tube TVs.). It looked like someone had taken a roller and painted that black line. It was unexpected, abrupt and done, like a thief in the night.
They were unprepared but lucky. They only needed a new television and to repair the walls.
This true story from your family’s history made me think of the freak storms in life which also hit abruptly turning us upside down. My analytical mind began to ask, am I ready if lightning strikes? Does my copper wiring draw lightning through the door of my heart, and leave burn marks on my soul?
Life’s freak storms have no warning, but God always has a plan. The house was only scorched not burnt down. The repairs were made and the house stood stronger for it.
What experiences in life have scorched you? These are the experiences which usually result in our most valued life lessons.
Are we the people who became deaf but regained our hearing later? Perhaps we’re the dog who was scared for life and ran from storms. Or the listener who hears this story and prepares.
Prepared? Know that “life’s struggles are not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Matthew 25:12). So, are our heads covered with the helmet of salvation; our feet shod with the gospel of peace? Is the breastplate of righteousness in place? Do we cinch up the belt of truth to guard against the lies? Is the shield of faith up, and our sword of the spirit (which is the word of God) at the ready? Finally, are our lamps filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit so we’re ready when the master comes? We’ll need a bright lamp to find our way through the darkness to his side.
So, be sure to put on your armor and have a full lamp, for the time is always now. Life is a freak storm.
Sources: Allen Family oral stories, Ephesians 6:10-18, Matthew 25: 1-13
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