I used to joke that we aren't afraid of them. We just send them to the nearest trailer park. Then a few tornados hit a few trailer parks, and the joke isn't funny anymore. Why anyone in this particular state would live in a mobile home is beyond me. Why anyone would stay in one when they have a fifteen minute warning that a long track, huge tornado is coming blows me away.
Yesterday, a long track, early warned, heavily chased tornado smashed a pretty big trailer park and two people died.
The pic above was taken yesterday by the pastor of one of our mega churches here. It is supposedly authentic. It is obviously symbolic. The cross in the pic is 163 ft tall, located on the campus of the church. The tornado started a few miles west of the picture location and continued until it significantly damaged the town of Carney, OK, some 60 miles away, causing one injury and a bunch of property damage for a town of 649 people.
What does it take to get people to understand and respect a tornado? Do they really have to die? Tornados are non negotiable. You aren't going to win an argument with one, and they have no respect for whatever rights people think they're entitled to. They are what they are, and they do what they do. Ignore them at your own peril.
What does it take to get people to understand and respect the cross? It to is a force in and of itself. It can change lives. It has changed history. There's a lot of Facebook chatter this morning about the cross representing 'good' and the tornado representing 'destruction'. Some see the cross as defense against the tornados of life. I'm OK with that, BTW.
But my thoughts this morning, as I absorb the impact of the tornados yesterday, are how the cross and the tornado are alike. Both of them have intrinsic power to affect lives. Both of them are what they are regardless of anyone's opinion, interpretation, background, belief system or worldview. To think of the cross as just a symbol of some idealistic or esoteric concept of a utopian lifestyle or way of looking at things is a huge mistake.
The cross is as real as the tornado, and has already impacted people, communities, cultures and history more than any weather phenomenon ever could. Yet people ignore it, shun it and ridicule it just like some trailer park residents do to the weather reports. Huge mistake.