I didn’t hear anything that sounded like a freight train coming my way, but the weather was definitely getting dicey and the voice in my head was telling me to head for our basement. But I didn’t. Why? Because there wasn’t a tornado warning issued for our neck of the woods.
Shame on me for trusting technology.
Thankfully, the tornado that hit Abbeville County recently was a pygmy on the official scale, but no twister is small if it hits your house, is it? This one didn’t damage our house or property, but it was definitely altogether too close for comfort.
When I saw day-after news reports about the storm, I was very grateful that no one in its path had been injured, but I was also a bit peeved that no official warning had been given.
As the storm was brewing, I knew it might be a bad one. I did take Meteorology 101 in college (seemed like the easiest science course available) and I have been a faithful watcher of The Weather Channel for many years, so I diligently checked several sources to see if there was a tornado warning issued for our area. There wasn’t.
But my tornado spidey senses were persistently tingling. Those instincts were honed to a razor’s edge when we lived in a double-wide mobile home years ago. Everybody knows trailers are tornado magnets.
When you live in a mobile home and severe weather is approaching, you’re forced to play “tornado roulette” and quickly decide whether to run outside and lie in a ditch—an entirely unappealing option—or hunker down inside and pray. That’s just one of so many reasons I was delighted our stint as trailer-dwellers was relatively short and why we’ve included basements in the houses we’ve built since.
But on this particular stormy evening, I chose to ignore all my internal twister alarms and instead just sat there in our living room, teed up in my recliner like a golf ball waiting to be launched down the fairway.
I also didn’t bother to warn my husband, so he wasn’t able to assume his customary insane, manly tornado-scouting position on our porch. (He’d apparently rather watch a tornado than survive one.)
I was tired and pretty comfy in my recliner, so I thought it was just easier to trust the experts at the National Weather Service.
The whole thing turned out to be a good reminder about how easy it is to place our trust in the wrong things. Humans and human agencies can let us down or even lead us astray, but believers in Christ have been given two amazing and precious resources to rely upon for wisdom and guidance—God’s Word and His Holy Spirit living inside us.
No, there aren’t any Bible verses that say, “Runneth thou now to thy basement,” but Jesus did say, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27)” My understanding of this amazing truth probably only scratches its surface, but I do know this: If God is willing to speak to me, I’d be crazy not to listen.
But guess what I didn’t do during that intense storm? I didn’t pray. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I didn’t even ask God for His wisdom about what to do.
When we ask God to direct our paths, He may lead us to “green pastures” or “through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23), but He’ll never lead us anywhere we’re not supposed to go or prompt us to do anything inconsistent with His character or His word (the Bible).
Maybe sometimes He’ll just nudge us to head for the basement in a storm. One thing’s for sure: next time I’m asking Him.