I recently went for a walk through a woodland area near my house. The sun was punching its way though the leaves, there was a cacophony of birdsong and I could smell the woodchip under my feet. 

All of a sudden, a nearby fence sparked as if it had been electrocuted and the sky roared a deafening crack of thunder. It was directly above me and it made my heart shake in my chest. It was like standing right in front of the PA at Glastonbury. I flinched visibly, thinking for a second that it was a plane about to crash near me. I could hear people in houses a few yards away shouting. I couldn’t work out if they were laughing or screaming. Torrential rain followed and I tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to take shelter under the canopy of the trees.

This experience reminded me of what is described in the bible when someone encounters the Lord Almighty, Yahweh. In Matthew 24: 29 after describing the ‘end times’ Jesus says,

“the sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light;

the stars will fall from the sky,

and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

Somehow extreme weather connects with our soul. The magnitude of the natural environment around us sobers our often inflated egos. It is a great teacher that reminds us of our appropriate place and size next to the One, True and Almighty God. 

The student world can be full of people who think they are the centre of the universe. It is an environment where ego and opinion is often heralded as King. But with a bit of crazy weather, people are screaming, shouting and rushing in all sorts of directions. Imagine then, the reaction that people will have when they encounter the creator of all things in his thunderous glory. 

We will all hit the floor together on that day.