The Rancher Who Stood Still Outside Dalhart

In the summer of 2019, a cattle rancher named Earl Whittaker watched a supercell thunderstorm roll across the Texas Panhandle toward his property outside Dalhart. The sky turned from blue to green to black in twenty minutes. Lightning struck the same ridge three times. The wind bent his steel fence posts like pipe cleaners, and the thunder was so deep and continuous that his cattle stopped running and simply lay down in the field, trembling.

Earl told his pastor afterward, "I've lived on this land sixty-one years. I've seen hail the size of softballs and winds that peeled the roof off my barn. But that night, I couldn't move. I just stood on the porch and watched. It wasn't fear exactly. It was something bigger than fear. I felt like I was standing in front of something that didn't need my permission to exist."

That is Psalm 29. David doesn't describe a God who politely requests our attention. The voice of the Lord splinters cedars, shakes the wilderness, and strips the forests bare. The Hebrew word for "glory" here — kavod — literally means "weight." The Almighty's presence carries a gravity that flattens everything trivial.

But notice how the psalm ends: "The Lord gives strength to His people; the Lord blesses His people with peace." The same voice that breaks the cedars of Lebanon whispers shalom over His children. Earl's cattle lay down because they had nowhere else to go. Sometimes neither do we — and that is exactly where peace begins.