Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Tornado Warning

I sat on the floor of the basement level of Talge surrounded by the guys who hadn’t left for Spring Break. The recording of a woman’s voice telling us that a tornado was spotted in the county and advising us to stay low with our heads covered played over and over in the background. Despite the incessant warning, no one was really taking the tornado seriously – but why should they? The sky hadn’t turned a sickly greenish color nor had the winds picked up. By the looks of it, we weren’t really in any danger, right?

The next morning, I woke up to a text message from my sister. “Helloooo! R u all dead??!!!??” the message read. Confused, I sent back a sarcastic remark and went back to bed, only be woken up a few minutes later by a phone call from my mother who was also worried about my well-being. Apparently, while we had been joking about the possibility of a storm the previous night, several tornadoes had ripped across seven states, taking the lives of thirty-nine people.

I know this sounds cliché, but that could have been us. One of those tornadoes could have easily roared across Southern’s campus leaving destruction in its wake. It is not my intention to send anyone on a guilt trip or start a mass revival – I only want to suggest that we obtain an attitude of gratitude. God protected our school because he has a purpose for us that we have not yet fulfilled. It is very easy to take life for granted, and we often forget that we have a purpose. If we understood these things, however, then maybe the car breaking down or the one bad quiz grade wouldn’t seem so important – maybe we would finally be able to stop noticing the one or two things that go wrong in a day and start focusing on the numerous things that go right.