The Day The Earth Shook

Thursday, June 25, 2026

No, I’m not talking about Tuesday’s commie infested elections – I am talking about literal shaking.  Yesterday started with a moderate 5.6 quake in remote northern California.  While no structural damage has been reported from that quake, there have been a few minor injuries.  The day ended with two much, much larger quakes, each measuring 7.2, in Japan and Venezuela.  Japan reported some damage and injuries.  The Venezuelan quake created massive damage with over 100 dead and thousands injured.  The quakes may or may not be related – it’ll take a long time for the seismographs, computers and geologists to figure that out.  Anyway you cut it, yesterday was a bad day.

The wife and I lived in earthquake prone Southern California for decades and both of us lived through the  very damaging Northridge quake of the 1990’s.  Given that history, a day like yesterday carries an emotional impact that perhaps not everyone will share.  Experiencing a moderate to severe damaging quake is a deeply impactful reminder that humanity is not in charge.  As literally everything shakes around you, you cannot help but realize that not only are you not in control, but that there are forces at play far beyond our comprehension.

The scales used to measure quakes technically measure the amount of energy released by a quake.  We are all used to energy measurements, horsepower, kilowatt-hours, things like that.  But the energy scales we deal with on a daily basis, if used to describe the energy expelled in an earthquake would use numbers so large as to defy comprehension.  Only those with special training in mathematical techniques to describe incredibly large numbers would have a clue and using those techniques on a routine basis is so cumbersome that it is simply easier to develop a new scale with more manageable numbers.  Even analogies move beyond anything we can really imagine – automotive engines the size of the solar system, things like that.

In times like these, we are quick to turn to our scientists – they who devise these descriptive scales and study these phenomenon.  But here is what you have to remember, they describe, but they do not predict and they most definitely do not control.  Sure, when Isaac Newton figured out how to describe gravity, it resulted in equations that can predict how a thrown baseball will travel and let us figure out how to land on the moon.  Earthquake science falls far short of that achievement.  The best it can do is tell us what happened, and if a quake starts far enough away it can give us a few seconds warning of what is coming.  We may turn to our scientists for comfort as they describe in their scientific terms what happened, but they offer no genuine comfort – only an illusion of control and understanding.

The Sunday after the Northridge quake, the preacher I heard, in a quake-disheveled sanctuary, preached on this passage:

And yet some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!”  Jesus replied, “I tell you, if these stop speaking, the stones will cry out!”

When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it,

The preacher wondered if that quake was not God’s prophetic voice just as Jesus described.  The sermon was inconclusive about the quake, but certainly called us to listen to God’s voice.  Yesterday seems a day when the same question must be asked.  Can it be that we have grown so deaf to God’s utterances that He must shake the very earth to get through to us?  Is God weeping over us?

I cannot answer those questions for I cannot even begin to fathom God’s mind.  But I am, this day after, reminded that I need to listen to and for God in every aspect of my life – carefully and obediently.