Nerves of Steel

It's not yet quite Spring, but yesterday evening we had our first thunderstorm of 2009 here in southeast Michigan. (Daily link: Very cool images of lightning thanks to Google's Image Search.)

My wife made the comment that "the lightning will turn our grass green." I had never heard that before and frankly, it sounded like just about the goofiest thing ever.

So I did some checking and yes, she appears to be correct, though scientists think it needs further research. Apparently, lightning releases nitrogen into the air with such intensity that it combines with the oxygen to create nitrates and then the rain filters it to the ground and fertilizes the grass, turning it green. Or at least helping the process along.

God's design for the world remains simple yet elegant. And maybe a little goofy.

Or that could just be me.

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NERVES of STEEL

My friend George, an ex-Marine aviator, wanted to show off his new twin-engine plane, so we took off one cloudy Sunday afternoon for a ride.

George was putting the plane through its paces when I noticed that a storm front had moved directly between us and the airport. We had no choice but to go through it.

Shortly we were caught in a violent thunderstorm, with lightning flashing all around us and thunder booming. After one particularly close lightning strike, we lost the radio and most of the instrumentation.

As we're being buffeted about and I'm hanging on for dear life, I hear George say, "Uh-oh."

Fearing the worst, I asked, "What's wrong now?"

"I've got the hiccups," George replies. "Do something to scare me."

[Pastor Tim's Cybersalt Digest; retelling by Mark Raymond]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: With technology making the world seem smaller and smaller, families are becoming more and more separated from each other geographically. This has the effect of making our friendships just as emotionally important to us as our family relationships. The Word Spy says the word for this happenstance is "framily." When your close friends are just as important to you as your brothers or sisters, you have framily ties.

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