Where I live, in central Illinois, earthquakes are rare: We get one worth noting maybe every 20 years or so. I remember the first one vividly, not because it was so big but because I was 7 years old at the time. The house rattled, but I wasn't scared: I knew just what to do. A few days earlier I'd seen a cartoon where Superman dealt with a quake by pulling the cracks in the ground back together. So I quickly put on my own Superman costume and raced outside, looking to duplicate his feat with my super powers which (I'd long since decided) were lying dormant, ready to be activated when a crisis struck. The ground, as it turned out, was intact, so the world didn't get to see my amazing abilities at work.

That first earthquake was fun. This last one, not so much.

It happened last week, as many of you heard (and some of you experienced), around 4:30 a.m. central time, and shook homes across nine states, in cities from Milwaukee to Chicago to Atlanta. I live just a little over 100 miles from the epicenter, so when it hit my house, it was loud, and it was sudden.

And it was scary, a lot more so than it would have been in the daytime. If I'd been awake when the walls started rattling, I would have processed what was happening quickly. Being jerked out of sleep, all kinds of thoughts flew through my mind. Big earthquake? Bomb blast? The Second Coming?

Nothing so dramatic, as it turned out. After I got my bearings, I got up and stepped outside. Birds were chirping like crazy, but that was all. Calls poured in to radio stations and 9-1-1, but they were mostly asking questions, not reporting crises. (By the way, in case anyone doesn't know, that's not the way to use the 9-1-1 line.) By and large across the country, we hadn't been hurt. Just a little shaken up.

Of course, it wasn't easy to get to sleep again after that. Something about having your house shaken doesn't lend itself to peaceful rest.

That brief experience was long enough to bring forceful reminders of a couple of things — at least for me, and I'm sure for a lot of other people.

To start with, it was a reminder of just how much we're not in control of events. Sure, we all say we know that. We don't know it, really; not most of us, not most of the time. It's just reflexive: We manage so many things for ourselves every day that we get in the habit of assuming the world around us is what we make of it. And it is, up to a point. But the point where that stops is much closer than we realize.

When I say "we," I'm thinking of most Americans, but maybe especially those in the Boundless readership: young, largely healthy Americans. Alas, I'm not so much in that "we" category as I used to be. Now that I'm past 40, a lifetime of seemingly near-perfect health has given way to certain problems that make me more aware of how much I used to take for granted. But I still take a lot for granted. I assume I'll get up every day, enjoy meals, do some work, talk with friends and family. I also assume that if I don't do something careless, I won't fall and crack my skull or get hit by a car. After all, virtually every day of my life, I've found things work out that way.

Waking up abruptly to an earthquake reminded me of how cocky that is. Suddenly, the whole world around me was very obviously out of my control. I couldn't see it coming. I couldn't do anything to stop it. And if it had turned out to be a big enough quake, I couldn't save myself from it. As I say, in the Midwest you don't expect that sort of destruction, and an alert, rational calculus might have told me, "Don't worry too much; the odds are in your favor here." But in those frightening first few seconds after waking up, who could tell? I could only try to get a handle on what was happening; I could have sought shelter, but even as that thought hit my mind, so did the thought that shelter might not be enough: I'd just have to hope things wouldn't get too bad.

But as I thought about how much was out of my control, another thought kicked in: How much God is in control.

Now the comfort that realization brings isn't exactly immediate and total: You have to think it through. Christian believers aren't immune to the natural disasters which are part of this fallen creation. Jesus Himself made a point of saying so. Speaking of a famed tragedy of his day, He said, "Or those 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!" (Luke 13:4-5). So knowing God is in control didn't mean I was safe.

But it did mean realizing that, in that rare moment of potential danger, I was exactly where I am every moment of every day: In God's hands. The only difference is that, at this moment, I was unusually conscious of my dependence.

Once that realization really sinks in, so did the comfort. I just needed to wake up enough to remember Who He is: the One Who loved me so much that he died for my sins. And remembering Who He is reminds me of some other things about Him too.

Christians know God is Creator of the world. We tend to forget He is its Sustainer as well. Deists conceive of a deity who made the universe, wound it up like a clock, and left it to run on its own; Christians, by contrast, know a God who keeps it all running. Every instant creation holds together is because He actively wills it to do so.

We know that some day, the earth is going to get a makeover. The time will come when we won't worry about the earth or any part of creation coming apart. When the world gets its big makeover, it will be coming together — fixed, at last, from the sin that broke it.

And we know that whenever that day comes, we won't see it coming. Jesus tells us that "you do not know the day or the hour" (Matthew 25:13), that it will come "like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2)

None of us know what it'll be like. Maybe, though, it will be a just bit like that late-night earthquake: a sudden shock out of nowhere, rocking the whole world. The after-dark experience many of us had gives us just the tiniest taste of something far more intense. There, though, the similarities end. For this time, when the world is shaken, the result will be more joyous than anything we can imagine.

Knowing that makes it a lot easier to sleep peacefully in the meantime.