Love's Storms

Telegraph technology, solar flares, and an amateur astronomer.

Today, we look at how close we are to the precipice.  Ready or not, you are living on the edge.

This year, we are learning to love better by exploring the greatest commandment – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  We’ve searched our hearts and plumbed the depths of our soul for how to love the Lord better, and halfway through the year it is time to investigate our minds.  How do we love God with all our mind?  What does that even mean?  This week is the seventh in a ten-part series on learning to love better with our minds… and today, we need to prepare our minds to lose it all.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Transcript

In 1859, the world was in the early stages of the Second Industrial Revolution, and most technology was still mechanical or powered by steam, electronic systems were in their infancy.  Systems like radios and phones, were yet to be developed and we were still twenty years away from Edison’s invention of the lightbulb.

However, the primary long-distance communication system at the time was based upon electricity.  The telegraph, which had been invented about two decades earlier was crucial for communication across cities, countries, and even continents. Before the telegraph, nothing traveled faster than the speed of a horse – after it, urgent information could be transmitted instantaneously.  The United States, England, Continental Europe, Russia, Australia, and even parts of India depended upon telegraphs for quick and efficient communication.

Which is why, on September 1st, 1859 when telegraph poles all over the globe began to catch on fire and overload, the world took notice.

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way. 

This year, we are learning to love better by exploring the greatest commandment – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  We’ve searched our hearts and plumbed the depths of our soul for how to love the Lord better, and halfway through the year it is time to investigate our minds.  How do we love God with all our mind?  What does that even mean?  This week is the seventh in a ten-part series on learning to love better with our minds… and today, we need to prepare our minds to lose it all.

What happened on September 1st is called the Carrington Event.  Named after Richard Carrington, an amateur astronomer from the village of Redhill near London, the Carrington Event was a large solar storm.  To be specific, it was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history.  The day before the Carrington Event, Mr. Carrington was sketching sunspots and he was blinded by a sudden “white light flare”.  The flash of light from start to finish lasted about five minutes.

The next day, the entire Earth was struck with a monstrous geomagnetic storm caused by the flare Carrington had observed.  The technical term is a “coronal mass ejection” and it sent a burst of magnetized plasma out of the sun’s upper atmosphere and directly towards our happy little planet.  to give you an idea of how much energy the solar flare directed at us – it was somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to the 25 joules – equivalent to about 10 billion times the energy of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  When this wave of magnetized particles reached Earth, they created powerful geomagnetic currents in our atmosphere, temporarily overcharging Earth’s magnetic field.  To put it into everyday terms, the energy deposited into Earth’s magnetic field was enough to power all the homes in America for several days.

The impact?  Telegraph poles caught on fire, telegraph operators were literally shocked in their seats and in a surprising twist, as operators disconnected their systems to avoid further shocks, the telegraph wires were powered by the atmosphere itself allowing them to continue to communicate.  Two operators, one from Boston, MA and another from Portland, Maine carried on a two-hour conversation using no battery power at all.

The good news?  No fatalities only some minor injuries and repairs required because the world was basically functioning without electricity in 1859.  The sobering news?  We could easily have another Carrington Event at any moment, and I don’t know whether you’ve noticed or not, but electricity is kind of a big deal nowadays.

Proverbs 17:17 says that a “friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”  Love isn’t just meant for the good times, it is meant for the hard ones, too.  You never know when life will bring storms your way, and when those storms come, will your love weather it or not?

In 1859, the world wasn’t dependent upon electricity, so losing it was a minor inconvenience, but today, a Carrington Event would disrupt every facet of life.  Communication satellites, including GPS would be knocked out of commission, transformers would blow, widespread blackouts would ensue, financial markets would be disrupted, payment systems would cease to function, and aviation and transportation systems would be thrown into immediate chaos.  Financial impacts of a Carrington level event have been estimated in the trillions.  That’s trillions with a T.  Lives would surely be lost, and emergency systems would be hampered in their efforts to coordinate disaster response.

When 1st Corinthians 13 says, “Love never fails.” That is another way of saying that love is independent of circumstances.  That’s why marriage vows commonly include phrases like “in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer” – if your love is dependent upon good health and a decent bottom line – that isn’t love, that’s a business partnership.

There is a word found throughout the Bible that also is interwoven into human living – the word is ‘calamity’.  A calamity is an event causing great and often sudden damage and lasting distress.  A house fire, a tornado, a discovered violation of marriage vows, a sudden death, or a health diagnosis that leads to a long and enduring battle with disease.  From famine to financial ruin – calamities are inescapable and often unpredictable.  As you drive through West Virginia, signs remind you not to text and drive because “this could be the last text you ever send”.  Every day people careen down the roads at 70 miles per hour and most arrive at their destinations safely… but calamity is a dashed yellow line away from all of us.

Naomi saw calamity in the death of her husband and two sons and her words to her neighbors as she returned to her homeland were, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?" (Ruth 1:20-21) 

On July 23rd, 2012, another "Carrington-class" solar superstorm was observed, but its trajectory narrowly missed Earth.  A near miss and you probably never even read about it.  We are always sitting upon the razor’s edge of calamity.  Every one of us is just a step away from Naomi’s circumstance – “I left full, but I came back empty.”

            Mayhem lingers in the shadows as a reminder of the fragility of life, but it also begs the question: if safety is an illusion, what is reality?

In the 57th Psalm, David stares unwaveringly into the haunting reality when he says, 

“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in You my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills His purpose for me.” (Psalms 57:1-2)

David describes life as a place where storms of destruction can swoop in at any time and later, in the same psalm, he describes life as “my soul is in the midst of lions, I lie down amid fiery beasts.”

Reality is scary.  We live on a statistical razor’s edge every day as we hurtle through the stars on a tiny blue sphere without seat belts... and for David those circling lions and impending storms of destruction led him to take refuge in God.  His awareness of his weakness led him to strength.

I would like to take a second to address a misunderstanding about Christians.  I’ve not always been a Christ follower, so I know that those who are irreligious are not all rabid atheists or persecutors of those who have faith.  Most irreligious people are happy for their Christian friends and neighbors to hold a faith that fulfills them…. but they see faith in Christ as a help for those not strong enough to be self-sufficient.  Karl Marx referred to religion as “the opium of the people.” And Nietzsche called Christianity “the religion of pity”.

Robert Heinlein once famously wrote, “religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.”

All of these ideas hold half-truths that get close enough to what Christianity is to present a viable counterfeit.  Christianity isn’t a crutch – it’s a seat belt.

Perhaps a crutch is for weak people, but a seat belt is for all people.  When traveling at high speeds with the awareness of potential danger at any moment, a seat belt is for those strong enough to acknowledge their fragility.  A crutch paints a picture of weakness that should disappear as we get stronger… a seat belt recognizes we will never be strong enough to be safe without help.

I’m not a Christian because I don’t feel like being intellectually honest.  I am being intellectually honest when I tell you the world is terrifying and dangerous.  Calamity awaits everywhere and mayhem ensues every single day.  We are just one Carrington Event away from danger and we have zero control.

And that’s the point.  God designed the world to point towards Him.  As the first chapter of Romans says, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

The world shows an intricacy, a complexity, a beauty, and a high degree of information that requires a Designer, but the events of this world also show how precariously we are perched upon the precipice of danger.  That sentence is both true and packed with alliterative punch.

So, David was wise when he said in Psalm 57 that his soul took refuge in God and that in a world of danger he cried out for God to fulfill His purpose for him.”

It could all disappear in a second… and if it did, who would you still love and who would still love you?

Which brings us to a paradoxically beautiful aspect of the Carrington Event of 1859.  While the telegraph system burned and the world’s communication reverted to Pony Express speed… that same geomagnetic storm brought the Aurora Borealis from the Northern Hemisphere and the Aurora Australis from the Southern Hemisphere into the night skies of the entire world.  Places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Italy reported seen the beauty of the Northern and Southern lights.  Calamity brought beauty with it.

And that's the rest of the story.  When we love God and love others – mayhem brings incandescent beauty in it, because calamity reminds us of what matters.  The storms of destruction uproot and lay waste to parts of our life, while washing and bringing life to things that once lay dormant.

If you want to see the northern lights, you have to survive the storms that bring them.  Lightning is dangerous, but stunningly beautiful when you have somewhere safe to take refuge.

So, what’s the moral of the story?  Could an apocalyptic Carrington-class solar storm appear at any moment and destroy life as we know it? Yep.  It definitely could and you couldn’t do a thing about it.

Life is a beautiful catastrophe waiting to happen.    Safety may be an illusion, but God is real… so find refuge in Him and set your mind on the things above because each day has enough troubles of its own.  If you lost it all, you’d still have Him… and trust me when I say, He’s enough.  The world may be harsh, but God is always good.

Learn to love better, learn to love through the storms.

As always, thank you for listening and hopefully we've done something to help make your life a little bit better.  If you have a chance to rate, review or share the podcast it would be a blessing.  By sharing with others or leaving a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, you help us reach more people. 

Or maybe you have a fun history fact, a feel good news story, or a riveting scientific fact you think could help us love better, I’d love to hear it!  Feel free to email me at scott@biblegrad.com 

And if you are ever in the Louisville, KY area, I’d like to invite you to worship with us at the Eastland congregation.  We meet for worship every Sunday and have Bible classes for all ages Wednesday’s, too.  If you want more information about Eastland, visit us at eastlandchristians.org.  Or if you are looking for more tools to enrich your Bible study, visit my personal Bible site, Biblegrad.com, where you can sign up for daily Bible devotionals called Biblebites and receive them in your email each morning, take online Bible classes, or find videos that will help you study through the Bible throughout the year. 

And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”