WELL-GROUNDED

Lightning Rods, Summerfield, NC

I’ve developed a Saturday morning ritual in the past few years of slipping through a Starbucks drive-through for a scone and a tall mocha and then casually enjoying the treat while aimlessly cruising the back road ridges of the local countryside. I always have an eye out for anything interesting that is worthy of writing a “look at that” haiku or blog posting and a photograph. Hence the name selected for my Observations blog. I don’t necessarily focus on any one thing like cooking which would probably draw many times the page views I currently enjoy, but that’s not my thing. I write this blog for the joy of creating and sharing.

My rambling journey last week took me past a country barn that I had chanced upon earlier in the year. On this day the weathered old hay barn was stacked to the brim with round bales of newly mowed pasture grasses. There was an observed symbiotic relationship between the aging barn that was protecting the hay from the elements and the large round bales that were helping to support the barn.

Once I had downloaded the images from the road trip and ran them through my rather simplistic editing program, I noticed the three lightning rods protruding above the ridge row of the barn’s roofline. A more refined cropping of the image revealed that these lightning rods were connected to a wire that ran down the right front side through small white porcelain connectors and into the ground. A direct lightning strike here would undoubtedly result in an immediate spontaneous fire that would light up the whole countryside in an instant if it passed through the structure!

A lightning strike over this barn will be directed from the high rods to the large expanse of conducting earth below. This barn is well-grounded! So are folks that are observed to be sensible and down-to-earth with their feet firmly on the ground. The analogy I recently read about in an article on the young golfing phenom Jordan Spieth couldn’t have been more apparent. Jordan is well-grounded in his reliance and faith in God and understands that much is expected of those who have been given much. He’s stated that his younger sister Ellie who has a form of autism keeps him grounded when he sees the struggles that she and her friends go through every day to do simple tasks that most of us take for granted. He still drives the same Yukon that he had in school and trusts his dad to help with the right investments. Investments like the new Jordan Spieth Family Foundation to encourage and support underprivileged kids, military families, and children with special needs.

People with a special charisma that attracts others to them can be referred to as lightning rods. They have a special energy that can become contagious. We seem to be drawn to them like lightning bugs to a flame. That fire can be destructive if the individual isn’t well-grounded. But we’ve all observed how this energy can also be used as a conduit for all manner of goodwill in this broken world when someone grounds themselves in a firm trust and faith in our Creator.