The Lightning and the Cage

In 1836, Michael Faraday stepped inside a wire mesh enclosure at the Royal Institution in London and invited his colleagues to blast it with thousands of volts of electricity. Sparks crackled across the outside of the cage. The air smelled of ozone. Yet Faraday stood inside, perfectly calm, completely unharmed. The metal shell conducted every surge around him, not through him. He had discovered what physicists now call the Faraday cage — a principle so reliable that it protects airplane passengers from lightning strikes to this day.

Proverbs 18:10 says, "The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe." Notice what the verse does not promise. It does not say the storms will stop. It does not say the voltage will disappear. Faraday's cage did not prevent the lightning — it simply ensured the lightning could not reach the one sheltered inside.

This is what it means to run to the name of the Almighty. The diagnosis still comes. The phone still rings at 2 a.m. The grief still presses in. But when we call on the name of Yahweh — when we run into that strong tower — the destructive current passes around us rather than through us. We are held. We are enclosed. The danger is real, but so is the refuge.

You do not have to generate your own protection. You just have to run inside.