Smite! Smite Them All!

A couple of weeks ago, we were standing in the foyer of our church building, waiting for the rain to lighten up.  There were several people waiting with us, watching the lone man who ran to the parking lot to roll up his car's windows.  My older son said, "Doesn't anyone but me know that running in the rain doesn't keep you drier?  It actually makes you wetter."  Mythbusters proved it, so that makes it true.

When the man's windows were safely rolled up, he came back into the church, bringing with him the smell of desert rain.  Everyone in the foyer took a big breath.  There is nothing quite like that smell.  In places where it rains frequently, rain smells almost like the everyday air.  In Utah, rain intensifies every other smell and makes it somehow better.  Suddenly, hot pavement is something you'd put in an air freshener.  Dirt is a shower gel fragrance.

You think I jest.

Without warning, a bolt of lightning zinged down and struck both the steeple of our church and a tree across the street.  The church has a lightning rod on the steeple for just such an occurrence so the building wasn't damaged, but I felt the electric current from that strike flow under my high heels, travel up my legs and stand all my hair on end.  The thunder that followed left ears ringing.

You may have heard that while filming "The Passion of the Christ", the actor who played Jesus, Jim Caviezel, was struck by lightning while on the cross.

Granted, being in a building that was struck by lightning isn't such a personal divine finger-point as that, but it does make me wonder...