Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand? — Job 26:14
We are sometimes
amused by the diatribes of unbelievers as they rail against the god of their
imagination, but you can always tell when even those who claim to be believers
turn out to be idol-worshippers. The
idol is a puny thing. It is carried
around by the ones who believe in it like the dead man in “Weekend at Bernie’s”. It is animated by and has power over only the
one who has been deceived by it, or who deceives himself with it.
A god that can be
fully explained and fully understood is not God. Most often we hear only the faintest
whispers and glimpse the Lord in shadows moving at the edge of vision.
When God speaks in
full voice, we are overwhelmed. In John
12, the Father speaks audibly to the Son.
Though the voice is overheard by those around Jesus, it is
incomprehensible to them. The crowd that
stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, An angel has
spoken to him (John 12:29).
We may all hear the
thundering voice of God in the storms of life, in our tragedies and
catastrophes, but, too often, it is sealed to us. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I
was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, Seal up what the
seven thunders have said, and do not write it down (Revelation of John
10:4).
The truth can create
fear in us. We cower and stop our ears,
passing it off as a “natural” phenomenon.
We have decided beforehand that God does not speak; therefore, this
terrifying thing cannot be His voice. He
can’t be telling us that we are reaping what we have sown. He can’t be calling us to repentance. God only speaks through the soft, soothing,
comforting voices of His priests and His ministers.
Beware of those who
explain away the thunder.
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