The Ground Shook at Pad 39A

In November 2022, thousands gathered along the causeways near Cape Canaveral to watch the Artemis I rocket lift off from Launch Pad 39A. Maria Gutierrez, a high school physics teacher from Orlando, brought her family to witness it. They stood seven miles away — the closest public viewing distance NASA allowed.

When the engines ignited, there was an eerie delay. They saw the blinding light, the billowing clouds of steam, the rocket slowly rising — all in silence. Then, several seconds later, the sound arrived. It didn't just reach their ears. It hit their chests. The ground beneath their feet vibrated. Car alarms triggered in the parking lot. Maria's youngest grabbed her leg and buried his face against her.

"I wasn't afraid exactly," Maria told a reporter afterward. "But my whole body knew something enormous was happening. Something beyond me."

The psalmist David understood that feeling. In Psalm 29, he describes the voice of the Lord thundering over the waters, snapping the cedars of Lebanon like kindling, shaking the wilderness of Kadesh. It is a voice so powerful that everything in His temple cries, "Glory!" Yet David ends not with terror but with tenderness: "The LORD gives strength to His people; the LORD blesses His people with peace."

The same voice that shakes the earth steadies the hearts of those who belong to Him.