Thoughts after Storms

Iowa storms clear the sky and feed the land. This past day and into the night, we have had many storms, with heavy rain and wind, and we are grateful as this most likely ends the drought.

Pink and white lightning crisscrossed the sky, just as the setting sun found a break in the line of clouds, causing a rainbow as big as the prairie sky could hold.

Now, in the darkest of darkness, hundreds of frogs are singing in the flooded sections on either side of the Wapsipinicon, which newcomers call the River, not realizing that in these parts there is only one "River" and that is the Mississippi. The Wapsipinincon is just the Wapsi.

All the others are tributaries, feeding one of the largest river systems in the world.

Far away to my left, I can hear a Black Angus mooing. And, unlike most humans, and like my dad, I can hear the high squeaks of the bats venturing out to seize insect dinners.

This part of the world is "big". There is nothing small here. The bats are big, the frogs are big, the cattle are big, the rabbits are big, the sky is big.

I am surrounded by farms of 1,000-2,000 acres, in an area where one does not know one's neighbors and only rarely sees the agents who man the farms. This is the state of agribusiness, not farming.

Last week, the giant machines sprayed the fields with fertilizers, and even in the heat, I had to shut the windows in order to breath properly, but this all is part of the bigness as well.

One cannot get proud in Iowa. Iowa creates a humility which is caused by Nature and Weather.

I grew up in bigness and it does not make me nervous, as it does some people who grow up in small, comfortable valleys and near rivers one can cross on a footbridge.

Bigness reminds me who I am in the universe. I cannot look up at the big sky tonight, as the clouds cover the stars, but, in the colder nights of April, I saw seven large meteors, shooting stars big enough to rival the big land.

God is bigger than all this. We cannot imagine the Almighty. But, staring out the window into the darkness, seeing a few lights miles away, I can just begin to understand myself as merely one more creature in His great world.

Even so, He knows me, like He knows the stars hidden behind the clouds, and calls me by name.

The rain and lightning begin again and I have to decide whether to shut the windows or let some of the cooler air come into the room. I am not in charge here, no one is. One tries to tame this country, but only One is truly in charge, and He is God.