Michelle Francl-Donnay writes about the challenge we see in the Lord’s voice and the similarity she has experienced in the heralding of glowering clouds, and ponderous stillness gives way to the rustling of leaves. A blink of lightning, a counted pause before the grumble of thunder—I relish those last moments before a thunderstorm breaks. Yet once the storm arrives, I often find myself unnerved, even frightened, by its strength. The howling wind tugs verses of the 29th Psalm from my memory; they swirl past with the leaves ripped from the trees—the Lord’s voice rending the oak tree and stripping the forest bare. Thunderbolts explode in my backyard. The Lord’s voice shakes the wilderness. Frankly, I prefer my thunderstorms at a bit of distance. I wonder if the Gadarenes felt the same way about Jesus. “They begged him to leave,” says Matthew. We are perplexed. Who would ask Jesus to keep his distance? But we did not feel the ground tremble, or taste the dust, as the herd thundered past into the sea. Or imagine what might happen to us if we encounter this man, Jesus, on the road. Have we lost our fear of the Lord? At a distance of two millennia, the stories safely tucked between the covers of the Bible, I suspect we sometimes find it hard to imagine being overwhelmed by the Word, which speaks with such power that water springs up in the desert, and demons flee. Yet those who let themselves be shaken, who allow their hearts to be rent open—who fear the Lord—these are the Lord’s cherished people, lacking nothing. “Desire this?” asks the psalmist. “Come, let me teach you the fear of the Lord.”