Sometimes we just need to shut our mouths, stand back, and watch.
I’ve been driven to that many times while watching storms—one 30 years ago rushing out of the north at my little house in north-central Michigan, one 25 years ago over the New Mexico desert with a train in the foreground and glowing red-rock cliffs beyond it, several in the 1980s and early 1990s closing in on my little house in northwest Arkansas perilously close to Tornado Alley, many in the 1990s bearing down on my old house at the base of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, and several hurricanes here in south Florida in the last decade.
Their power is breathtaking, their beauty extraordinary. And their complexity is—well, far beyond human comprehension.
Yet God’s Word tells us to learn from them. Like the child tutored by the genius, we may comprehend only a tiny bit about them, but we can comprehend some things. And those things are, literally, awe-some.
Recently, at Cornwall’s Facebook page, my friend Carlos Félix Velázquez, a scientist, brought my attention to a news item reporting that “Thunderstorms contain ‘dark lightning,’ invisible pulses of powerful radiation.” “[A]long with bright thunderbolts, thunderstorms unleash sprays of X-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays, a form of radiation normally associated with such cosmic spectacles as collapsing stars. The radiation in these invisible blasts can carry a million times as much energy as the radiation in visible lightning.”
Scientists have discovered that thunderstorms also emit other strange phenomena, like those in this illustration from Wikipedia: “sprites, elves, blue jets, and crawlers … bursts of electrical energy that form about 50 miles … above Earth, sometimes leaping all the way from the tops of thunderheads to outer space. … the discharges may create electrical conduits between the thunderstorm and the ionosphere, a tenuous layer of the outer atmosphere extending 600 miles … into space.” Storms, like God’s deliverance of His people in history, reveal the power of God. The psalmist Asaph wrote:
You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water; the skies gave forth thunder; your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. [Psalm 77:14–18]
The wise Elihu, one of Job’s counselors, said God “scatters his lightning about him …. He covers his hands with the lightning and commands it to strike the mark. Its crashing declares his presence” (Job 36:30, 32–33). He continued:
… At this also my heart trembles and leaps out of its place. Keep listening to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. Under the whole heaven he lets it go, and his lightning to the corners of the earth. After it his voice roars; he thunders with his majestic voice, and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard. God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend. … He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning. They turn around and around by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. [Job 37:1–5, 11–12]
Why? “Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen” (verse 13).
Elihu told us something else about lightning, too: “he scatters his lightning about him …. For by these … he gives food in abundance. … Its crashing declares his presence; the cattle also declare that he rises” (Job 36:30–33).
By lightning God gives food and the cattle declare that He rises? How so?
It’s unlikely that Elihu, some four millennia ago, knew the chemistry of nitrogen fixation, but God knew it then, because He designed it, and we know it now. Lightning’s extreme heat combines nitrogen and oxygen into nitrogen oxides, making the nitrogen usable for plants. Consequently, it’s an important part of how plants grow—and cattle, of course, depend on plants. So cattle depend in part on lightning, too!
How sad it is, then, that some scientists, like space physicist Stenbaek-Nielsen of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, see no meaning in storms. “[N]obody knows how important sprites might be to Earth’s atmospheric system or how they might interact with the space environment,” NationalGeographic.com reported. “For all we know at the moment, Stenbaek-Nielsen said, lightning sprites might simply be like rainbows—‘pretty to look at, but of no further significance’.”
Really?
No, for
God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” [Genesis 9:12–17]
We’re at the start of storm season in much of the United States. Go watch a good one—and praise its Creator for His power, His love, and His grace, revealed especially in the Lord Jesus Christ, who “rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).
Featured Image Courtesy of worradmu/freedigitalphotos.net
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