I was asked to preach on January 11, 2015.  The texts for the day were from Genesis 1, Psalm 29, and Mark 1.  These were my thoughts.

Once, as a child in Kansas, playing with neighbor kids in their yard, we watched as heavy clouds rolled across the sky toward us.  They were so thick, with such a defined edge, I remember us childishly speculating if this was how night came.

Then our neighbor’s mom tore out the back door. She yelled at us to run, run home as fast as we could.  As we crossed the alley, my parents hurried out to meet us and to get us into the basement. We made it just as the storm hit, with weeds, branches, and debris tumbling past our basement windows.

“The voice of God shakes the wilderness …,”
writes the Psalmist. “The voice of God twists the oaks,
and strips the forests bare.
And in God’s temple all cry, ‘Glory!'”

In the age of Sandy and Irene, we no longer perceive divine power within a storm. We understand even the most capricious winds as meteorological events, capable of human explanation. A TV evangelist may may rail about God’s wrath in the wake of a hurricane. But the degree of his awe may be measured by the fact that he does not fall to his own knees, but only calls on others to do so.

Psalm 29 is not the only scripture to speak from a place of powerful disruption..
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