May 18, 1980 is one of those dates on which many of us can remember where we were and what we were doing. That was the day Mount St. Helens erupted. I had just started my first year at Western Washington University and recall standing outside the Performing Arts Center looking south toward the eerie and colorful red skies, emblazoned by the sun's reflection upon tons of airborne volcanic ash. Many students heard the morning explosion some 200 miles away.

My wife heard the blast standing outside her Poulsbo home and thought something large had fallen and crashed inside the house. The explosion, like a nuclear bomb, was heard as far away as 600 miles. It killed 57 people.

Can you imagine being right next to it? Standing near, as many did, at the head waters of the Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers which in short order flooded with debris from the mountain's blast?

A number of men and women were rescued within a few miles of the mountain, and they testified to the most amazing thing. They did not hear the explosion! Some, a mile or two away, thought that the darkened sky from the immediate blast was cloud cover and rain. How could that be?

They were in a "zone of silence." Scientists explain that the incredible upward thrust of the exploding mountain also sent the sound of the event upward into the atmosphere where it bounced back to earth (several times), but in intervals outward and away from ground zero.

So although people like old Harry Truman were right next to the disaster (on Spirit Lake's shores in the volcano's shadow), they wouldn't know of the eruption unless they were looking at the mountain at that moment.

This reminds me of when Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand" (Matthew 13:13). It was possible to stand right in front of Jesus and yet not hear his words. Likewise today it is possible not to hear the gospel message that is being preached far and wide.