When Lightning Touches Sand

Along the beaches of Cumberland Island, Georgia, you can sometimes find fulgurites — hollow glass tubes buried just beneath the surface. They form in a fraction of a second when lightning strikes sand. The bolt carries temperatures exceeding 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit — five times hotter than the surface of the sun — and in that searing instant, ordinary silica grains fuse into something entirely new. What was wild, untouchable energy becomes a fragile tube of glass you can cradle in your palm.

John tells us something happened that makes fulgurite look routine. The Word — the same Word that spoke galaxies into orbit and set the boundaries of every ocean — touched down into human flesh. The Almighty, whose voice thundered creation into existence, compressed Himself into the cry of a newborn in Bethlehem. "The Word became flesh," John writes, "and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).

Lightning fuses sand into glass from sheer, indifferent power. But the Incarnation was no accident of force. The eternal God chose to enter the grit and gravity of human life — not to destroy what He touched, but to dwell within it. To be held. To be known.

The next time you feel the distance between heaven and earth, remember: God closed that distance Himself. He didn't shout across the void. He moved in.