Hi Friend,

Natural disasters are a fearful reality of life.  The world was turned upside down for residents of Mayfield, Kentucky when a tornado occurred rapidly with little warning.   Entire businesses were destroyed, homes were demolished, people were injured and some died.  It isn’t an overstatement to say the nation was stunned.

A few years ago, another small town, Henryville, Indiana, just north of Louisville was affected when a tornado essentially wiped it out.  News cameras interviewed a lady from the area who expressed the feeling of many when she described what happened to her community.  “It was as if the foundations of the world were gone,” she said.

She looked out the window and saw buildings and animals flying through the air.  It was a scene reminiscent of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz as houses and trees went spinning by. A school bus was picked up by the wind and thrown into a building.  Even homes were lifted off the ground and moved.

As a child I remember watching television news reports of a flood that occurred in a small town my parents had lived in prior to my birth.  We were glued to the 6 o’clock news watching the catastrophe that had occurred to former neighbors and friends. As we watched the news reports of the calamity my dad sat bolt upright and exclaimed, “That’s our house!”  The house my parents had once owned had been picked up by the flood of water and was being washed down the Tug River.

I was a child experiencing for the first time the enormous impact of the destruction of a fundamental part of life.  We feel small by comparison to the massive power surrounding us.  Our very existence is fragile.

Maybe that’s the way a child feels when his parents divorce—or argue.  The foundations are threatened.

The greater question is—what are the real foundations and who laid them? When God chastised Job, it was not because Job broke His law.  It was because Job forgot WHO established the foundations.

When Job questioned the justice of God the answer from the whirlwind was “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.”  (Job 38:4NRSV)  In other words, if you are wise enough to bring God into judgment, where’s the universe you created?

But it doesn’t end there.  The One who laid the foundation will one day shake the foundations.

When the Holy Spirit was given in the 1st Century to a small group of believers who then “spoke in tongues” as tangible evidence of the invisible Spirit, some witnesses claimed these men and women were intoxicated.  So Peter told them that this was a fulfillment of the prophecy of the Prophet Joel who foretold this time.

His explanation stunned the crowd.  More powerful things are yet to come!   “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.”  (Acts 2:17)  In other words, the wonders you are seeing are only the beginning of miracles.  In verse 21 he says   “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.”

It’s astounding to think that we, who are alive today, may one day witness a change in the planetary orbit.  What will happen to a world when every visible foundation in which we’ve come to trust is shaken?

Well, interestingly God planned for just such a time.  Moses told ancient Israel about the real foundation.  “[God] is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he. (Deut.  32:4)

The Apostle Paul clarifies that statement in the New Testament.   Speaking of ancient Israel that received water from a rock when everything else had failed, he said, “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”   (1 Cor. 10:4)

The prophetic times the world is yet to face will be the worst in the history of the planet.  Even so, people connected to the Rock will never lose the foundation.  Such people will survive the tornado.  Even when the planet is shaken off its foundation, they will endure.    “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”  (Matt. 7:25)

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien