Our World: World Affairs

Wind, earthquake and fire

IT is often said that an Englishman can only talk about the weather. But UK weather is very unpredictable and Britain recently experienced its longest spell of bitterly cold weather for a century. Similarly, the eastern seaboard of the USA has been paralysed by extreme blizzards, and parts of north-eastern Australia have suffered violent storms and
severe flooding.

 

In the Bible we can read about God's answer to Job, where God proclaims His control over the powers of nature.
And as we see how the weather can so disrupt man's activities, we begin to appreciate the power that God has at His disposal when the time comes for His judgments to be poured out on the earth.

 

To give some idea of scale, apparently a single tropical storm contains more energy than all man's stockpile of nuclear weapons. And that is just one storm, and many such storms track across the tropics each year. But there are other forms of power at God's disposal. There is an immense amount of energy released during an earthquake: the Chilean earthquake of 2010 released five times as much energy as the largest thermonuclear device man has ever tested. And then there are volcanoes. In the spring of 2010, a single remote volcano closed down most of the airspace of Western Europe.

 

The power at God's disposal

Thinking about these natural phenomena, we get some idea of the power God has at His disposal through wind, earthquake and fire. This should make us all bow in awe and respect to the One who created these things and holds them in His hand. As Romans 1.20 says: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (NIV).

 

Yet there is a power that is even more important than that seen in the wind, the earthquake and the fire. As He made clear when speaking to Elijah on Mount Horeb, God was not to be found in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire. He was to be found in the still, small voice: a voice which spoke to the prophet about the goodness, mercy and compassion of God. The lesson God was teaching Elijah remains vitally important, because the still, small voice of
God has a power far greater than all the tropical storms, earthquakes and volcanoes combined; for the still, small voice of God alone has the power to transform a man's life.

 

The Word of God, and especially that Word which was made manifest and dwelt among us, is a truly creative power that can turn the dust of our human nature into the gold of a tried faith. If all we had ever experienced was God's awesome power, all we could do would be to bow in respect and serve Him in fearful trepidation. But once His Word
has made us aware of His love and His abounding compassion, we must be changed. That change inspires us to serve God because we love all the attributes He stands for; we serve Him because we really want to, and not because we fear the consequences of disobedience.

 

And the amazing thing is that our experience of God's love means that we can look at what is happening to the world without fear. Many thinking men and women are deeply troubled by "those things which are coming on the earth"(Luke 21.26) – the climate changes, and the earthquakes that seem to become more prevalent. We know that a time of trouble such as never was is yet to break over the earth. Things will get much worse before they get better, and we cannot be sure how much of those terrible calamities we shall experience.

 

However, the consolation and comfort for us is that like Elijah we are in God's care. Although at Sinai the mighty wind broke the rocks in pieces and the earthquake shook the mountain, and though the fire consumed everything that it touched, Elijah remained unscathed. In a world spiralling into chaos, let us keep our ears tuned in to the still, small
voice that still speaks to us.