Thunderstorm Brewing


As the night bus weaved itself amongst the high-rises and flyovers, the heavens shook with thunder and lightning streaked across the skies. All was obscured by the concrete and steel around us, though the rain fell on all. The neon flickered, but it was the lightning flash that lit all in its weird blue. Threading itself between apartment blocks, the bus seemed to be playing a game of hide-and-seek upon the slippery roads. The power and aggression of the thunderstorm was seen, yet that power was not for our benefit, merely for our entertainment. With cow-stares, all of us packed onto the bus looked to the skies and thought how this was almost as good as the thunderstorms seen on TV. The bus was weaving between the footsteps of a giant, yet he wasn’t interested in us and so no danger was there. As the titan strode purposely on, unaware of the insignificance beneath him, the bus danced along with him, always just out of sight.

Then the bus turned onto the road before the huge courtyard of the PLA’s Musical Academy. I was suddenly confronted with the largest patch of uninterrupted sky that I had found in Beijing. Bereft of man-made intrusions, the sky was for a brief moment laid before me shattered and alight with thunderbolts. With a large mural and low set Stalinesque buildings upon the horizon I could get but a hint. Cocooned within a bus that didn’t even slow, I caught but a glimpse. Yet for a small instance I got a taste of a time past. A time when huddled into the cracks of the landscape, the people built their squat homes where they could; a time when the skies rained down manna, or destruction; a time when God, with violence, split the sky in two before His people. The titan suddenly brought the force of his gaze upon what was below him. For just that briefest of moments, God’s countenance was on me. I felt the fear of the past. Not fear born of ignorance, but the fear born of knowledge; the full knowledge of God’s energy. Call me a superstitious fool, but this was the wrath of God. At least, this was the power of God. A thunderstorm, yes, but why separate the two as though they are unrelated? Who is seeing clearly? The man who looks at the sky through the gauze of modernity – lights, comfort, the haze of pollution, all in a pretty metropolitan frame – hiding beneath an umbrella? Or is it the man eating honey and locusts in the wilderness, looking at a cold, dark, empty sky suddenly become alive and throw down water upon the earth. Strip away all those petty distractions that keep our eyes down and the contempt for the past would be ripped from us too. Awesome power is precisely that. Lord have mercy.

But it was gone too quickly, though perhaps that was a mercy to me. The rolling cityscape never missed a beat and we were all swallowed up in concrete again. Mobile phones rang, the bus’s plasma screen gave tomorrow’s weather, eyes and ears were pulled gently from the rage of the storm. Forget all that, you’ll be home soon. Watch this instead. Empty skies are forecast tomorrow. My own phone shuddered in my pocket and checking new messages I too was brought back under the city.

Praise the Lord that I was given the sight of what our fathers saw of God’s power. Then we knew we were but mere sojourners upon the Lord’s earth. Unable to hide from God’s wrath, instead the reminder of human life’s frailty was above, below, behind and before us. The fear was there, the respect for God’s powerful love, but with it came the longing for rebellion. As is taught, God shakes the earth to teach His children like the mother rocks the crib to quiet the infant (St. John Chrysostom). It shouldn’t be any wonder then that as soon as they were able, as soon as they saw the opportunity, our fathers fled from God – from the power they hated; from the protection they needed. Once, they were exposed to God’s power and knew, but then things changed.

Then the kings of the earth and the great ones, and the generals and the rich, and with them everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and threw up the rocks of the mountains.
“Hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne and from His wrath…for we fear the great Day of Judgment when none will stand.”

They did a good job in hiding amongst rocks and caves. But this city still cowers beneath Heaven. God still shakes this city with earthly tremors. He still cracks open the sky with violent thunderstorms. Here we are, pretending none of this happens; pretending the Gobi isn’t coming to engulf us; pretending that we’re not poisoning ourselves with car fumes. Can no one see the mercy of each new day? Can I? Are we buried beneath the rocks, the wires, and the mountains of food so deeply?

How then can we ever hope to ascend?

“O Heavenly Father I ask that you will remind us all that we are but sojourners on this earth. Reveal to we cosseted and anesthetized sinners our wretchedness so that we can escape the snares of the world and come to the joy of sorrowful repentance. Strip away the impurities of our lives by the violence of Your love for us. Destroy what is worthless by earthquake, hurricane or flood, so that the true blessings of You are all that remain. In those, may we bless You all the days granted to us. Be this Your will, be it done to us; and through the prayers of the Holy Theotokos and all the saints give us the strength to endure.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen”