The Storm
It was a beautiful June day on the farm. Strawberries were ripening. The tomatoes, melons and cucumbers were starting to show promise of a bountiful harvest. There was a lot of work to be done. I remember sweating as the humidity increased, but it was still early. The heat and humidity were still bearable. However, the air was charged, as if it were electric.
At first, I paid no attention to a distant rumbling. It was too far away to be concerned about. But the rumbles became more insistent, louder. I knew a storm was approaching. Still, I had work to do. Weeding rows of produce keeps your attention toward the ground, so I finally looked up when the rumbling also started to crackle. This was a sure sign of an electrical storm, so I looked to see what was making the disturbance.
What I saw was frightening. A low, black cloud was rolling in from the southwest. One lightning bolt after another lit up the otherwise black, rolling cloud. It became more threatening and appeared to gain momentum as it came closer. I thought, “This could be dangerous!” as I ran to the farm house and called in my brothers and sisters.
I ran into the kitchen and told my mother, “You have to see the storm that’s coming!”
She looked out the kitchen window. She asked, “Are all the children n the house?”
I nodded my head.
She looked at us calmly and said, “Let’s pray.”
We all knelt down and started to pray all the prayers we knew as the storm hit. Hail the size of golf balls poured down out of the sky and when they hit the aluminum roof of our sun parch, the noise was so deafening, we couldn’t even hear ourselves pray. So we prayed all the louder! Fortunately, the house was built of fieldstone and could withstand the storm.
Ten minutes later it became calm. The storm had passed. It still sounded ominous as it rumbled away to the northeast. But we were safe again.
We looked out the windows. The lawn outside the house was covered by more than an inch of hail. But the sun came out and started to melt the ice away. I thought that our crops were destroyed. The fragile strawberries, tomatoes and melons that we were growing could not withstand the pounding that the storm seemed to have produced.
A moment later, a pickup truck driven by our neighbor, Harold, came slowly up the drive. Harold got out of the truck and stood there, saying, “Laura, you have got to see this! Come with me!”
My mother got in the passenger side and Harold turned around and drove back out to the road. He parked his car in the middle of the road and was showing mom something, so I ran out to see what it was.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. There appeared to be a dividing line right down the middle of the road. On our side of the road, there were a few small hailstones, but the corn field looked healthy. On the neighbor’s side of the road the corn crop was completely stripped bare of leaves, with thick hail on the ground.
Harold was sitting in his truck with mother saying, “I just don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.” Then he turned to mother and said, “Laura, your family sure knows how to pray!”
I went out to the vegetable patch where I had been weeding and inspected the tomato plants. There was an occasional hole in the leaves, but the plants and fruit were intact. The melons and the cucumbers were also healthy and intact.
I finally inspected the strawberries. There were a couple of overripe berries that were punctured by the hail. But wen we came out to pick them, we got more than we bargained for as our containers were overflowing. The few soft berries were used right away to make the best tasting Strawberry jam I have ever had.
God is good, isn’t He?
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