Finding Resolve in God's Creation Part 2
Psalm 147 NIV
1 Praise the Lord.
How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!
2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
6 The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.
7 Sing to the Lord with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp.
8 He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills.
9 He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call.
10 His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;
11 the Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.
12 Extol the Lord, Jerusalem; praise your God, Zion.
13 He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your people within you.
14 He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.
15 He sends his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly.
16 He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes.
17 He hurls down his hail like pebbles. Who can withstand his icy blast?
18 He sends his word and melts them; he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.
19 He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel.
20 He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws.
Praise the Lord.
Welcome to the second installment of “Finding Resolve in God’s Creation.” Out of my recent trip to spend time with my family in North Dakota and Minnesota, I gained new appreciation for God’s creation. Nature is both an object of provision and a testament of God’s perfect omnipotence and sovereignty. These posts are just some of my revelations that I received in my viewing of the landscapes.
The Roar of the Storm
“He sends his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. He hurls down his hail like pebbles. Who can withstand his icy blast? He sends his word and melts them; he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow. ”
A storm moved through while we were visiting my family’s lake cabin. We watched it come in from the west, so we were not unprepared. When it arrived, it didn’t just pass through - it roared through. The sky turned black and the rain fell horizontally in the constant blasts of wind. It was, at least for me, anxiety-provoking and scary.
Teachers of the Word love to say, “Don’t be afraid in the storm!” (as they should). The story of Jesus calming the storm with “Peace, be still!” is taught to us over and over again so that it is etched in our minds. It is most definitely true that the story tells of the Lord’s sovereignty, power, and even His comfort. We always talk about God being above the storm, but somehow my mind always shifts to God creating the storm.
Today I’m not going to draw the popular allegory to “storms” in our lives. Rather, I want to talk about God’s hand in actually creating stormy weather. I want to focus on His creation of the Earth and its atmosphere and how it produces meteorological phenomena and patterns. Mostly, I want to discuss God’s hand in the forces of storms.
I know, we don’t like to talk about God being involved with things that cause us discomfort or elicit fear. We especially avoid any conversation about God having His hand in something destructive. But to avoid it is to ignore so many pieces of the Bible:
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?
Job 38:22-27 NIV
Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
Jonah 1:4
Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding
Psalm 148:7-8
When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
Jeremiah 10:13
One of my favorite aspects of the upper midwest is the storms. Nothing compares to watching a storm develop and come across the plain. The weather there is volatile - hot and humid cloudless days turn into nighttime cell storms with giant wall clouds that approach with an eeriness. Ironically, these storms also scare me. They’re destructive, dark, and they contain the unexpected. They are both awesome and intimidating at the same time.
The way I feel about storms in many ways parallels how I view God. In fact, to me, storms possess a sort of essence of Who God is. Like God, a storm is a force that cannot be ignored, swayed, or stopped by man. Its path and development can only be guessed; people have made it a science to try to predict its pattern, but they ultimately fail at perfecting it. A storm subjects everything in its way to its will, consenting or not, and will leave its impact on the Earth. God’s power, force, and His glory can be felt in the heaviness and awesomeness of storms. As Psalm 29 tells us, even God’s voice is powerful and majestic - thundering as it breaks even the biggest and strongest trees.
I often ask myself “if God’s sovereignty subjugates even the largest forces, why would we even begin to worry about the ‘big’ things in life such as illnesses, heartache, or even death?” And if His Word going forth is so strong, why do we doubt what He promises and says to us? I question why, if we are so fearful of storms, do we not fear God, the one who creates the storms and holds our judgement in His hands, that much more. I wonder if we are capable of holding the fear of God and the love from God simultaneously in our hearts, just like we view a storm and its subsequent rainbow as a complementary pair.
I think that if we can dig into ourselves to see God’s magnificence in thunderstorms, we may begin to be able to see His splendor in our personal storms too - whether it be illness or struggle or loss of any kind. Through our own eyes, trials seem messy, destructive, and unrelenting. But understanding Who God is opens the door for us to see that He is in control and that His reign is righteous even if it doesn’t feel like it. A situation may appear as if it’s a type of destruction, but it is actually rebuilding, and what may seem like forever is actually just a season in time.
I can’t end this post without mentioning that God’s love, in the form of grace and mercy, allows us to persevere through any type of storm. When a weather storm approaches, we are equipped with wisdom to seek shelter and make smart decisions on how to react. In our own personal storms, God is our hiding place, our spiritual refuge, our wisdom, and our hope. For myself, this notion is what allows me to see God in two seemingly conflicting positions. He is mindful of us even in His omnipotence. We are the apples of His eye even while He creates and moves the eye of the storm. So, what does this mean for us? It means God can create whatever storm He wants, naturally or spiritually, but it will never destroy, override, or alter His love for us. And this, is why we can sit in awe of His creation, including the storms.