WARNINGS WORK

We were warned. Warned Well. Had we not been, consensus is, there would have been many fatalities. Amazingly, in our metropolis there were zero. Folks were warned and heeded the warnings. As of this writing, there were fourteen tornadoes in our corner of the state and seven confirmed ones in the greater Dayton, OH, area on Memorial Day night. One EF4 tornado left a half-a-mile wide, nineteen-mile long path of destruction. The next two days our church had a group out delivering water and helping clear driveways and yards of fallen trees and other detritus. Seeing the devastation of home after home firsthand, I kept remarking to myself and to any that would listen, “I can’t believe there were no people killed.” There weren’t. Wondering why, I again and again came back to the fact that folks were well warned. I had just lay down for the night and was reading something on my phone when a banner notification from a news source dropped from the top of the screen over what I was perusing. “Tornado Warning! Take cover immediately.” I raised up on an elbow staring at that notification when another, the government alert, appeared on the screen with that jarringly loud “Nrrrrrrrh, Nrrrrrrrh, Nrrrrrrrh,” sound: “Emergency Alert! Tornado warning in this area. Take Shelter.” I jump out of bed yelling to my wife and son, “We’re under a tornado warning, head for the hall.” Then the neighborhood siren began wailing. It was a wild night. For the next hour and a half there was a rolling sequence of those notifications, Nrrrrrrh’s, and wails of sirens as new warnings for newly detected tornadoes came in. Connecting my phone to a local station I watched the alarmed meteorologists report. Their very countenance and tone of voice emanated warning. Brighter reds probably don’t exist than those they used as background of the words of the label of their radar maps “Tornado Warning!” In fact, the radar map itself was largely red and deep purple, colors designating the intensity of the storm. The flurry of meteorologists’ movements as they alternated between different maps, trying to keep up with the simultaneously occurring tornadoes in different parts of the city, added to the urgency of their warnings. It greatly enhances the warning when the local meteorologist keeps saying, “I’ve done this for thirty-five years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.” All this time I kept getting texts from concerned friends in the area warning me with messages such as “There’s a tornado headed right towards you.” There were two. One trekking along just north of our plat and another churning destruction along the south of us. I must confess; I was born and raised in central Oklahoma, yet I was getting a bit nervous. The tornadoes came at night. Personal observation of the conditions alone could not have generated so much concern. It was the incessant barrage of numerous and urgent warnings. Warnings worked. They moved people to safety. At some point I began to think of the 2nd Coming of Jesus. No tornado can begin to compare with the calamitous things that will occur on planet earth just before and attendant with His coming. Put most succinctly, judgment is rushing towards this earth. It’s alarming that there is no alarm. The closer judgment gets, the less, it seems, folks are being warned of it. Though it is expounding something a bit different, as I surveilled the destroyed homes and vehicles, I kept thinking of the verse, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; ....” (2Co 5:11). Or, could we say, “That knowing judgment is coming, we warn people”—as a meteorologist warns of the tornado. I chatted with an elderly gentleman while staring at one end of his house. The roof was gone, and a huge tree had crushed the walls. He was telling me, “That’s the master bedroom. My wife and I were lying there in bed when we heard the sirens go off. We had just gotten out of bed and to the other end of the house when it hit. That tree landed right on the bed…” He let his voice trail off not finishing, nor needing to, the sentence with, “ had we still been in bed….” Warnings work. If there are no warnings, people will perish. We should warn. And warn well.

WARNINGS WORK

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