It’s a little after 2am. A storm is raging outside. The sky is bruised purple and edged in sulphur – a roiling, seething mass. Like the ocean defied the bonds of the Earth to threaten us from overhead.

It’s like no storm I’ve ever known.

I’ve walked through vicious storms with their erratic bolts of lightning and startling booms of thunder. The kind that make you jump and set your ears ringing. I’m glad I am not walking through this. This is a different beast altogether.

No scattered flashes for this storm. Instead, the sky flickers in almost constant illumination: bright white with the occasional twinge of lilac and blue. The constancy should make it less startling. It does not. It sends dancing shadows reeling inwards from my window and it seems the whole world has been encircled with electricity. A warning.

Accompanying the flaring light is a low and continual roll of thunder. No shocking booms. Just the steady roar of timpani. A voice reverberating through the heavens with a reminder of our insignificance. It’s worse than the sudden, almighty claps of other storms. Like the quiet building music of a horror film that lets you know something is coming – something terrible – but gives no clue as to what or whether you’ll escape alive.

I have never felt so small.

I am safe inside my brick and mortar walls. And yet…and yet that sky tells me in its rumbling whisper that that safety is an illusion. Just another man made creation that, despite our pride in it, nature could tear down in a second.

So I lie in silent reverence. I defer to the ravaged sky. And I pray for those who are less hidden than I from its wrath.