It is a common question on local social pages. A loud boom shakes the whole community, rattling picture frames and upsetting neighborhood dogs. Inevitably, people will turn to social media to ask what happened and did anyone else experience the disturbance. People find the boom unsettling.
The local news station did an investigative report several years ago and determined that the sonic booms are generated from F15 fighter jets flying out of an air base several hundred miles away. I can not explain the science of it. But I know that when the jets surpass the speed of sound, the repercussion of the sound generates a boom that is not only heard, but also felt by the people on the ground.
An interesting fact of this phenomenon is that the pilot of a jet flying over Mach 1 does not hear or experience the boom. He has no immediate knowledge of the reverberating effects of his flight overhead. In the cockpit, he is merely flying a plane and conducting business as usual. If someone did not tell him about their experience as he flew overhead, the pilot might never be aware that he had shaken the lives of people left in his wake.
A Spiritual Metaphor
The same can be said of the spiritual life. The Sunday School teacher may not be aware of the spiritual sonic waves occurring in the lives of the students when they hear about God’s grace for the first time or the hundredth time. Parents can not see the eternal after shocks of daily Bible reading and prayer. The effects of a simple act of kindness toward a stranger cannot be measured by science.
I wonder what kind of sonic boom rippled into the universe when Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the church door. Did the gates of hell rattle when Paul preached the gospel message at Mars Hill? Did Constantine generate spiritual sonic waves when he legalized Christianity in the Roman empire? Did William Tyndale have any idea the lasting legacy that would come from translating the Bible into the English language?
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The shepherds outside Bethlehem had no idea what happened in the heavens. A massive choir of angels was the first sonic boom into the silence of humanity waiting for God’s salvation. Scripture says the sun stopped shining and the earth shook the day that Jesus died, a sonic wave that penetrated the depths of hell and set captives free.
On the third day, early on Easter morning, the greatest boom in the universe occurred as Christ the Lord drew breath and sat up in the tomb. He pulled the death cloth from his face and folded it, simultaneously laying death aside forever. The sound of the stone being rolled away from the tomb is still echoing through the world of the living.
Some say it never happened. They didn’t hear it. They didn’t experience it. But the echoing boom of Christ’s life continues as we tell the story, as we share God’s love and grace, as we offer kindness and light to a dark and hopeless world. Because Jesus lives, His universe shaking, spiritual earthquake continues in the world through us.
May the life of the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ continue to echo through us.
“Let us beware of regarding the Lord Jesus Christ, only as one that is dead. Here, I believe, many greatly err. They think much of His atoning death, and it is right that they should do so. But we ought not to stop short there. We ought to remember that He not only died and went to the grave—but that He rose again, and ascended up on high, leading captivity captive. We ought to remember that He is now sitting on the right hand of God, to do a work as real, as true, as important to our souls, as the work which He did when He shed His blood. Christ lives, and is not dead. He lives as truly as any one of ourselves. Christ sees us, hears us, knows us, and is acting as a Priest in heaven on behalf of His believing people. The thought of His life ought to have as great and important a place in our souls—as the thought of His death upon the cross.” – JC Ryle
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