Tornadic Mercies

 

Twisting winds and tearing torrents

Flashing lightning, spinning strength.

In the din of hail and thunder, vicious vortex rips the length

Of the dark Miami Valley in the middle of the night

While the train of terror’s power rips and roars in massive might.

 

Stinging tails of heaven’s scorpion

Drag and plunder through the land

50 miles per hour they thunder with a half-a-mile-wide span

Droning, darting, plodding, thickly, chewing forest field and farm

Shredding silos, ripping houses, chopping car-lots, tumbling barns.

 

Strewing items, sucking lakes and

Spinning mud, awful and grim

Whirling in a dark gyration with outrageous rpms.

Grisly, weird, unearthly power freaks the area’s human crowd,

Doubting, waking, listening, wondering, better go to basement now.

 

In the path of power’s destruction

Multi-hundred years of growth

Strewn and scattered like a vapor, twisted, dumped and bristle-mowed

Sawn and splintered, trashed and tumbled, splattered ripped and overturned

Gas lines busted, roofs invert, electric jolting, storefronts burned.

 

From the wreckage in the morning,

Tens of thousands wake, alive.

Less than twenty of us missing? Less than ten? Less than five?

Only one! Up in Celina, sweet old Dale woke up in glory

In abounding grace his Father quickly wrapped his earthly story.

 

Can we hear a heavenly warning

In the wind and whirling pall

Can we taste the sweetest mercy and God’s kind eternal call?

Christ the master of the storm and sovereign of the weather

Died to rip us from our sin, to reconcile us to his Father.

 

Strength invincible yet tender

Is the simple heart of God

Not one random speck or splinter moves without his splendid nod

Flicks a cyclone like a whisper, holds his hand, protects his flock.

Devastates yet guards and shelters- -

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Turn to Him, The Riven Rock.

 

 

Reuben Huffman

June 2019