Life Angles: LIFE Acronym #10 - Lightning Is Flashing Everywhere

LIFE Acronym #10:
"Lightning Is Flashing Everywhere"

We are in monsoon season, and I so enjoyed this past Sunday's storm. I was just earlier today lamenting the fact that the news said that we should have no more storms for a while.

But tonight, I was pleasantly surprised to see the lit-up sky proving that the radio was wrong. Or perhaps I had heard them wrong. I wasn't listening really closely anyway...

As I arrived home this evening, the main thing on my mind was that I still needed to write today's post. So I figured that I'd go outside on the back porch and enjoy the weather as I write. Since I've been out here, I've been the happy beholder of some pretty awesome displays.

As I was sifting through my list of LIFE acronyms to decide which one I was going to use for today's post, I saw the acronym "Lightning Is Flashing Everywhere". "Ah-hah!", I thought. "This is the PERFECT acronym for today's post!"

Now that I have today's acronym, it's time to figure out what I'm going to write about it. So I've been sitting here, just watching the beautiful designs that this storm is drawing across the sky, and waiting to be inspired.

In the meantime, I did a little research on lightning. Apparently, lightning reaches 50,000º Fahrenheit! That is more than 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun (which is 9,940º F)!!!

Lightning is one of nature's most beautiful sights, but it is also one of nature's most deadly forces.

Around 1,000 people per year get struck by lightning in the U.S., and roughly one tenth of those people are killed by the strike.

To us, lightning is something that we see only every once in a while. But the entity called Planet Earth knows no break from it.

The Earth as a whole is struck approximately 100 times per second! This isn't hard to believe, considering that there are about 2,000 active thunderstorms at any given moment worldwide.

It's incredible to think about the intense buildup of positively- and negatively-charged electrons within a cloud system.

A typical lightning strike contains about one trillion watts, which is all released in just a tenth of a second! And the channel that houses this immense transfer of energy is only as wide as a pencil! It appears much wider to us because of the immense light that is created by the transfer.

On average, each lightning bold transfers 10 to the twentieth power electrons! That's 100 QUINTILLION, or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000! In case you don't know how much 100 quintillion is, let me break it down for you.

One million is 1 thousand thousand, one billion is 1 thousand million, one trillion is 1 thousand billion, one quadrillion is 1 thousand trillion, and one quintillion is 1 thousand quadrillion. Then you multiply THAT by 100 to get 100 quintillion!

The air around this bolt of one hundred quintillion electrons is super-heated to the point of explosion, which causes a physical shockwave and therefore the loud boom that makes our pet dogs put their tails between their legs.

This sound wave of pushed air is so powerful that it can damage structures and people who are too close to it.

Oh man, there went a HUGE one!!! It was a cloud-to cloud strike, and it veered all across the sky above my head!

I'm on my outdoor recliner holding my iPhone up as I read and write, so I won't miss any of the lightning shows. It's only lightly sprinkling, so I must be just on the edge of the storm. This is the perfect way to observe lightning! I couldn't have asked for a better setup!

All of my readings about lightning, while sitting here and seeing these truly AWESOME displays as I read, have given me a solemn, sobering, and humble feeling.

I can only think of the majesty of God's power and all of His creations. We humans feel so powerful and domineering over the elements and animals of this world. We feel like we are in charge. We feel like we are the rulers of everything.

We build huge sky scrapers, dig deep pits, make massive and powerful machines, fly all around the planet in our super-fast planes, create floating cities (aircraft carriers and cruise ships) that hold thousands of people, and communicate instantaneously using our electronics that bounce invisible signals off of satellites that we have put in geosynchronous orbit.

But even with all of our masterful dominance over the elements of this world, our ability still pales prodigiously in comparison to God's power. I'd like to see us humans try to recreate and control a thunderstorm!

It's almost as if God gave the Earth thunderstorms to constantly remind us of our nothingness before Him.

He created ALL of this! He controls it! The elements are all at His command, and are perfectly obedient to Him. These elements that we so proudly manipulate, are in fact perfectly humble examples for us.

The elements bend to our will if we follow their rules. They submit to our control and our desires. But they wield the power to destroy us!

It's true, the elements are an important part of God's creations. But we are a step above them in importance. We are His children, created in His image; the rightful heirs of all of the glory that He possesses! But we would do well to remember the example of the elements.

The next time that I feel a tinge of human pride coming on, I will do my best to remember the powerful, obedient elements that form lightning, and to remember God's power, the very power through which He allows me to accomplish anything of value that I ever accomplish.