Seriously God...tornadoes in the winter?
"Your mysteries are madness, Yet still they keep me captive." Citizens, "Madness"
A tornado can’t happen here—that’s what I thought about a tornado hitting where I live, especially in the winter. I’ve lived in the same region for a very long time, and other than a few smallish tornadoes, I don’t remember hearing the shrill of tornado sirens other than at noon every Wednesday for the weekly siren test. Even when that test happens I barely notice it. This past week, a perfect mixture of hot and cold air came together to create a EF-2 tornado within my city. The overall damage wasn’t widespread, but the fact a tornado touched down within miles of my home was a real and sobering danger.
The storm was the topic of the day at work, but mostly the question of why schools were delayed if everything had settled or how many homes were affected. After hearing the alarms early in the morning, many of my coworkers described having gone to the basement with their little ones and listening for an incoming sound of a freight train (what a tornado sounds like apparently).
That night while in the car with my daughter I asked her if she knew about the tornadoes. Some of her friends had heard the sirens, but she hadn’t. Her room has two large windows on two outer walls at the front of the house which made her the most vulnerable to any strong winds, so why hadn’t I alerted her? Was it because I didn’t want to scare her and let her sleep?
Truth is… I slept through the storm and sirens and had no idea anything had even happened until I checked my phone. I failed to react to the danger.
I can’t help but feel this may be a reflection of my heart as well.
Overall, this winter, I feel like I’ve been fairly down. My highs don’t feel high and my lows feel…blah. Never really affected by the weather in the past, I have felt the gray overcast of this winter press down on me a little more than before.
So it’s February and a siren goes off in the middle of the night and I sleep through it. I’m not surprised. My body and mind are telling me—a tornado could be coming, but what can I do about it anyway? So just stay asleep.
Actually, what I’m supposed to do is rush into each of my kid’s room, put my youngest on my back if he can’t get up, and usher the whole family to the basement. Likewise, spiritually, when it comes to my church I’m supposed to be like that watchman in Ezekiel 33:1-20 and Isaiah 62:6-7,
I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem;
they will never be silent day or night.
You who call on the Lord,
give yourselves no rest,
and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem
and makes her the praise of the earth.
But when I see the politics at church and general lethargy amongst many of us; when I face the feeling that I don’t think I’m going to change and other’s will never change—I just want to keep sleeping.
I want to hibernate in a den like a bear in winter and wake up in to another season in my life.
Life seems hevel (the Hebrew word in Ecclesiastes translated as “vanity,” “meaningless,” “vapor”). So where better to go for answers than Ecclesiastes where everything in life is deemed vanity. I’ve read Ecclesiastes several times, but this week it hit so differently this time. In these last few years, I feel like I’ve asked so many questions and made so many observations that the Teacher talks about in the book. Death wasn’t some distant concept, doubt wasn’t someone else’s wonder and I have more questions than answers.
Reading through the book I almost felt comforted in the flood of questions. Ecclesiastes was like the penultimate entry of Seriously God?, and I felt so strangely invigorated after finishing it. Everything I’ve failed at, all the backwards results in my church, the good, bad, and ugly of life…it’s all hevel. The fact I have felt up and down about the world around me and struggled with questions of faith doesn’t make me a terrible Christian; it makes me human like the Teacher. I love how the Bible Project1 talked about one lesson of the book:
“Accept life as you experience it, not as you expect it to be.”
That is spot on what I have not been doing and it makes sense why I’d rather hibernate than wake up for tornado sirens. I need to except life as I’m experiencing it each day. It doesn’t mean things won’t change and I won’t make strong pivots, but each day has the riches of family, friendship, a good meal, and tornadoes outside.
Ecclesiastes ends like this in chapter 12:13-14—
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.
Everything is hevel…every consistency and inconsistency I see in my life and church, every win and loss I experience at work, and every doubt and moments of pure joy I feel. But through my tiny life span, I have one duty—to live for God. That I can get behind.
Everything feel hevel? We are right there with you. Share your winter blues with us and then tell us what God is stirring in your heart.
I don’t always perfectly align with the Bible Project’s theology, but I am not deeply offended by it like some are. They often have a masterful way to explain a broad overview of many of the books of the Bible.