I have been enjoying making new friends here in western Oklahoma where I have been the speaker from Saturday through Tuesday for renewal meetings sponsored by two local churches. This area is referred to as Tornado Alley because of the frequency of tornados which occur here. The home where we are staying has a “fraidy hole” which is pictured here. The fraidy hole is the place to be in a tornado. It can hold up to a dozen people. Our hosts store, among other things, important papers they do not want blown away in their fraidy hole. They also accept the presence there of bull snakes which keep down the rodent population. There are occasional tarantulas and black widow spiders in the fraidy hole as well. This reminds me of Amos 5:19: “….it will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him.”
The pastor of one of the two churches here is a “storm chaser.” He avidly drives across the countryside in pursuit of closeness to the drama and majesty of the tornado. He acknowledges that his interest may have something to do with the trauma he experienced in going through the ravages of a tornado at the age of five. So Oklahomans live with the real possibility that their homes could be destroyed by tornados. This awareness is accepted as a fact of everyday life.
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