thunderstorms

I woke up at 5 AM yesterday morning to shouts of thunder and drumming rain.  I've never seen so many flashes of lightening all at once.  Going back to sleep was impossible now, so I thought I might as well watch the show.

The rain ran sideways, the trees bent low under the weight of the wind.  Branches leaned so close, I imagined I could reach out, touch the leaves, climb out the window, and ride the the tree.

I watched the rest of the storm from my bed, so sleepy and yet unwilling to miss this glory.  "The world is charged with the grandeur of God./It will flame out like shining from shook foil" -- isn't that how the poem goes?  I repeated that line each time lightening struck.

As I curled tighter in my bed, I remembered another night when a 12 year old girl opened that same window to watch the eye of a hurricane pass over her home.  She too wondered how it could be so light outside, and how something everyone feared and prayed against could be so beautiful.

In that moment, as in this, I felt deepest peace, because God makes thunderstorms as well as sunrises.  I used to think thunderstorms were God's grief flowing down to earth.  But these moments make me wonder if maybe...maybe sometimes...God takes delight in thunderstorms too.

[Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur"]