SERMON ILLUSTRATION ALERT! PREACHERS MAY WANT TO TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING!
This Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) image of Hurricane Ike approaching Galveston Island reveals more than the obvious. Ike is probably going to be the third most costly storm in history, behind Katrina (2005) and Andrew (1992). Drivers in the south and across the nation have already experienced Ike's rage at the gas pumps, but that is a small loss compared to the massive devastation along the coast.
Ike left about $27 billion worth of damage in its wake, but that is hardly fathomable. We can't possibly wrap our minds around the monstrous pain and loss that millions feel today because of this storm.
But look carefully at the picture above. Within the well-defined eye, near the right side toward the bottom, you'll see a white dot. That is the 584-foot Cyprus-flagged bulk freighter Antalina, which got caught in the storm when its engines failed with 22 souls aboard. The ship and the crew were forced to ride out the storm, hoping against hope they would not be swamped or roll. This satellite image shows the ship still safely afloat as the eye passed over them, giving them a brief respite before the southeastern eye wall pummeled them and Ike unleashed his fury all over again.
Happily, the Antalina made it safely through, and a tugboat towed the ship and crew safely to port on Saturday. Amazingly, all 22 crewmen are well and the ship is undamaged, but I doubt their lives will ever be the same. Once you've survived a storm like that, everything else seems trivial by comparison.
Image Copyright ESA [2008], captured and processed by CSTARS University of Miami under license from Eurimage. CSTARS runs jointly with the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency a Hurricane Watch program where they take routine SAR images of tropical storms during hurricane season.
3 comments:
Dr. York,
Thanks for sharing that image. What struck me, I think, is the idea of perspective. In the storm, we are almost as if frozen in the here and now. What's gone before is a fainting memory, and what might yet be is a fearful consideration. Our perspective is so limited, but Heaven's is not. Our sovereign and loving God knows and sees all - even a little boat in the middle of a raging sea!
"O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. . . when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers. . . what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him?"
(Psalm 8:1, 3-4, ESV).
Great story. I'll have to tuck that away in the sermon illustration files. If you get the chance, my brother, his wife, and their three kids could use your prayers as they wait to go back and clean up at their home in Galveston.
Fantastic illustration idea. I unashamedly admit I grabbed it and used it this past Sunday. I just hope everyone's preaching profs are as educational and encouraging as you have been to me!
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