The Morning the Ground Shook at Cape Canaveral

Maria Gonzalez drove down from Jacksonville with her two daughters to watch the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch in February 2018. They parked six miles from the pad, which felt like a safe distance. When the engines ignited, there was a strange delay — they could see the fire but heard nothing. Then the sound arrived. It rolled across the water like a living thing, a low roar that climbed into their rib cages and stayed there. The car windows rattled. Her youngest grabbed her leg. The ground beneath their feet trembled as if the earth itself had something to say.

Maria later told her pastor she had never felt so small and so alive at the same moment. "I kept thinking — this is just rocket fuel. This is just something humans built. And it almost knocked me over."

That is exactly the tension the psalmist captures. "The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty." The God who splinters cedars, who shakes the wilderness of Kadesh, who strips forests bare — this is no tame deity whispering suggestions from a distance. His voice carries the weight of creation itself.

But here is where Psalm 29 surprises us. The same voice that breaks and shakes also blesses. "The Lord gives strength to His people; the Lord blesses His people with peace." The Most High whose voice thunders over mighty waters is the same God who bends low to whisper peace over your life.