Coming as I do from a place where bangs and flashes were all too recently a sign, not of celebration, but of conflict and destruction, I love a good firework display. And our 4th July came to an end with a particulalry good one put on by the City Council of Grandville. We decided not to brave the main event in Grand Rapids City Centre (funded in part by Floyd Mayweather as part of his retirement event... or should that be, funded by Ricky Hatton who was beaten by Mayweather last year!) but to go back to the scene of the morning's parade.
I dread to think how much money literally went up in smoke last night, not just in the official events, but also in the impromptu backyard shows going on all around us... Sometimes a little too close for comfort... But last night was not a night for thinking about the cost of it all... It was a night for sitting back in a lawnchair in the middle of a highschool baseball field and enjoying the view.
Mind you, when I thought back on earlier in the week and the natural fireworks we witnessed on Wednesday night which went on for over 8 hours... This display, though impressive, was as nothing...
Even the noise of the rockets going off couldn't compare to the noise of the thunder a few nights before...
But perhaps more impressive still, though much quieter and lasting much more briefly, were the lightning bugs that were rising up from the grass all around us, momentarily flaring into a pinprick of light, that you would catch a glimpse of with you peripheral vision, before it petered out.
God doesn't always have to shout to gain our attention... But we need to be looking in the right direction... and that isn't necessarily up into the heavens.
In a day that began with A10 Thuderbolts and ended with humble lighning bugs, I have no doubt where God was to be found...
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