Boom!

In 1st Chronicles 29, there is a passage that expresses the Psalmist's view of the supremacy of God:
11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, The power and the glory, The victory and the majesty; For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, And You are exalted as head over all.
12 Both riches and honor come from You, And You reign over all. In Your hand is power and might; In Your hand it is to make great And to give strength to all.
13 "Now therefore, our God, We thank You And praise Your glorious name.

And, what a great passage to think on during this week leading up to Thanksgiving - because He is great and powerful, because He reigns, because all things belong to Him...we give Him thanks.  Our hearts can be stirred to worship Him.  He operates in our lives for His glory - sometimes that will involve seemingly negative occurrences; other times there are unexpected blessings.  But, we respond to Him in the good and the bad with adoration and worship.

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God operates in a manner that cannot always be understood, and sometimes He will show up in sudden, yet transformational ways. It's all according to His plan. Isaiah 55 says:
8 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord.
9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
10 "For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater,
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

One week ago today, early in the afternoon, across around 10 counties in North Alabama, residents report that they heard a loud "boom," according to ABC33/40, which states that the mysterious noise came at 1:40 that day.

The report said: "Alabamians flocked to Twitter, with many reporting the event shook their homes."

The National Weather Service "hypothesized the sound originated from an aircraft sonic boom or a meteorite from the Leonid shower."

But, a NASA representative had a different take:

NASA's Bill Cooke says the origin of the mysterious boom still remains unclear but shut down the NWS' theory of a Leonid shower meteroite.

Cooke says the sound could have been produced by a bolide, large supersonic aircraft or a ground explosion.

Maxwell Air Force Base says, "it wasn't us," according to WBRCFox6, with a spokesman saying it was not the result of a training exercise - the story reports: "There is no exercise the facility would conduct to cause a boom that could be heard from Montgomery to Birmingham. No one in the Montgomery [sic] called saying they heard the noise, he said."

The article says:

In the past, these sounds have often been associated with a meteoroid entering the Earth's atmosphere. These objects can be traveling at between 25,000 and 160,000 mph when they first enter the atmosphere. The meteoroids quickly lose speed because of the atmospheric drag, but not before it results in a ground-shaking sonic boom.

Of course, you have to wonder if it were a meteorite, where did it land?  Or did it burn up upon impact with the atmosphere of the earth?

You know, when I saw the story, I thought about those "booms" that come into our lives - the unexpected, sometimes the unexplained, perhaps originated or initiated by God, or certainly allowed by Him, in order to test our faith or to bring us closer to Him.  Those booms may come in the form of an unexpected medical diagnosis, a financial crash, a relationship challenge, or the loss of a friend or loved one.   We can't explain why bad things happen, but we can respond to those circumstances by turning to God and allowing Him to teach us and strengthen us - as the Bible says, the trying of our faith brings patience.

But, sometimes those unexpected things can be viewed as blessings in our lives, and can be regarded as positive - maybe a financial blessing, the news of a new baby coming into the family, the arrangement of events in our lives that illustrate God's hand.  There may be occurrences that cannot explained in any way other than the hand of God - what we can call a "miracle."  

Truth is, God operates in a realm far different than we do, and He invites us to experience Him in a supernatural way, beyond human understanding.  There will be times when we don't understand what He's doing, but we are called to trust Him anyway.  His ways are higher than our own, and in the midst of serving Him, He offers a peace that transcends human understanding.  So, when He intersects with or even interrupts our lives with a "boom" that we don't comprehend, we can still acknowledge His sovereignty and allow Him to shape and grow our faith.