It actually was a dark and stormy night. All across North Texas storm warnings were going out, and the veracity of this storm was expected to be among the highest levels seen in a very long time. Some folks were hunkered down, as was being suggested, in closets with radios, water, and flashlights.
The forecasters were not wrong, the storm was ferocious. Gusts of up to 70 miles per hour and numerous tornados wreaked havoc as the storm moved with amazing speed out of the west. As the storm bore down on one home a lightning bolt let fly and struck the home. So violent was the strike that it shook the ground and shook houses hundreds of yards away. But the violence wasn’t limited to sound and motion, the bolt of lightning started a fire.
The home’s owners, alerted by the aforementioned sound and motion, and warned by smoke hastened to refuge with a neighbor. There they watched as flames first began to appear in one corner of their home. A home they had moved into less than a year and a half earlier. Their home in which they had, with loving care, placed memories and mementos, treasures, and trinkets. Their home, which had welcomed so many others was now foreboding as fire was seen through the pouring rain. As lightning flashes revealed smoke pouring out of their home.
Firetrucks began to arrive, first one, then two, then 10, then more. Brave men battling the blaze as the storm’s wind fed oxygen into the house, now a raging inferno. In less than an hour, all was lost. All memories, all mementos, all treasures, all trinkets, all of the love and care and struggle that went into the building of the home, lost as their home became just a burned-out hulk.
The next morning the firemen were still there dowsing the smoldering ruins. Large machines moved into what once was their home to tear down the walls and expose any lingering elements of the fire—crashing walls, water, and foam.
And then, all was quiet. The fires were gone, the firemen were gone, the home was gone, only the ruins remained.
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
till the storms of destruction pass by.
I cry out to God Most High,
to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
He will send from heaven and save me;
he will put to shame him who tramples on me. Selah
God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness!
Psalm 57:1-3