{"id":5377,"date":"2026-04-20T11:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5377"},"modified":"2026-04-20T11:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:34:19","slug":"underneath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/underneath\/","title":{"rendered":"Underneath"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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With its geysers, bubbling hot springs, grizzly bears, and herds of bison, Yellowstone National Park has always been a special place.

Yellowstone’s significance, however, has undergone a bit of a transformation in recent years.\u00a0

Geologists have begun to grasp that America’s most famous park sits atop a “hot spot,” a thin place in the earth’s crust where a magma dome occasionally rises to impose its will on the neighborhood.

Interestingly, the hot spot\u00a0hasn’t always\u00a0been in the northwest corner of Wyoming.

It first showed up in Oregon about 16 million years ago and has migrated slowly across the state of Idaho to its present location.\u00a0\u00a0

Actually, the hot spot itself has never budged.\u00a0But the massive North American tectonic plate\u00a0has been gliding almost imperceptibly right above it.\u00a0It continues to move at\u00a0the rate of about\u00a0an inch a year (approximately\u00a0the speed of our fingernails’ growth)\u00a0in a generally southwesterly direction.

The good news is that a few million years from now, Yellowstone National Park will be just up the road from my home here in central Indiana. \u00a0

The bad news is that between now and then\u00a0the hot spot is likely to continue erupting catastrophically, something it’s been doing every 630,000 years or so.\u00a0
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Geologists agree that whenever Yellowstone goes into its next super-volcano mode, everybody within 1,000 miles is going to have a really bad day.
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Some estimate that volcanic ash would not only bury the entire Midwest (the world\u2019s largest and most productive agricultural zone) but would trigger a global winter that might threaten human survival.\u00a0 \u00a0
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In case you haven\u2019t been watching the Discovery Channel lately, it just so happens that Yellowstone appears to be at the end of one of its 630,000-year cycles.
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For science journalists, this is exciting stuff. For online news editors, the temptation to write \u201cclick bait\u201d teasers is almost irresistible.
\u00a0
Fear-inducing headlines (One billion could die!\u00a0If you survived, where would you live?<\/em>) read like posters for a movie in which Tom Cruise \u00a0or Bruce Willis alone can save us. The image above identifies Yellowstone as American Doomsday.
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As if we need more evidence that terror makes people pay attention, here\u2019s a recent teaser for the Weather Channel app:\u00a0\u201cOne day the sun and earth will die; tap here to find out when.\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s quite a departure from \u201covernight showers expected in your area.\u201d\u00a0
\u00a0
The late Douglas Adams, author of\u00a0The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>\u00a0and satirical pieces like\u00a0The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul<\/em>, suggested that someone facing cosmic disaster needs to heed just one piece of advice:\u00a0
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Don\u2019t panic.<\/em>
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Followers of Jesus would agree.
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In one fashion or another, the world as we know it is going to end.\u00a0There\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u00a0We are fundamentally helpless before geological and astronomical processes that we are only just beginning to understand.\u00a0
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But even though the earth has been regularly subjected to history-altering calamities, there are two reasons not to become emotionally paralyzed.
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The first is that while the hot spot underneath Yellowstone is always seething, the odds that an eruption will happen between now and Thursday are vanishingly low.\u00a0
\u00a0
The park\u2019s official geological website reports 61 earthquakes of varying intensities during last month alone. Is that normal? Yes. But it sure generates anxiety-inducing headlines.
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It would be a shame to sacrifice our peace of mind because of what-if<\/em> stories.
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The second reason is far more compelling.\u00a0Deuteronomy 33:27 reminds us, \u201cThe eternal God is our dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.\u201d \u00a0
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God\u2019s arms represent his unbroken care – his supervision of every circumstance. \u00a0
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God’s arms are underneath the magma.\u00a0And underneath the fault lines.\u00a0And underneath the tectonic plates that are carrying us, so very slowly, on our ride across the surface of the Earth.
\u00a0
God\u2019s arms are also underneath your calendar this week.\u00a0And that upcoming crucial conversation.\u00a0And\u00a0your family.\u00a0And your latest MRI. And your hopes for the future.\u00a0
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There\u2019s no place you can go, nothing you can do, or nothing that can happen to you today or tomorrow that will possibly alter that fact.
\u00a0
Douglas Adams got it right:\u00a0\u00a0

Don’t panic.

Underneath whatever you are facing this week, God<\/em> has you in his grip.<\/em>


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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0With its geysers, bubbling hot springs, grizzly bears, and herds of bison, Yellowstone National Park has always been a special place. Yellowstone’s significance, however, has undergone a bit of a transformation in recent years.\u00a0 Geologists have begun to grasp that America’s most famous park sits atop a “hot spot,” a thin place… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[132],"class_list":["post-5377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5379,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5377\/revisions\/5379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}