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 ESV)
Have you ever heard of Zeus? Or Poseidon? Uranus? Mother Earth? Have you read stories of the “god of the sea” wreaking havoc on sailors, or the “god of the sky” sending lightning like judgment on humans below? Maybe you have read the Greek epic, The Odyssey, and read about the Greek god of lightning, thunder, and storm. You may have heard in fairytales about the gods of earth, wind, fire, and ice.
Creation Is Ruled by Divinity
The stories we tell and the history we read reveal that humans have the suspicion that creation is ruled—ruled by a divine being.
Even the most ordinary natural events like rain, wind, and thunder, we suspect to have some connection to the supernatural. Well, the Greeks were right about something—they were right to associate the movements of nature with divinity. But Zeus and Poseidon don’t deserve the credit. The Lord, “the Maker of heaven and earth” does (Psalm 121:2 NIV).
The workings of nature are not automatic—they are governed by the God who rules all things.
The God of the Bible Rules Over Creation
We have another ancient text to set beside The Odyssey, and the annals of Roman or Norse mythology. It’s the true story, the Bible, the place out of which all echoes of the truth ring.
In the Bible, there’s an ancient prophecy called Jeremiah, written by a man hundreds of years before Jesus ever came on the scene. Jeremiah knew the one true God, not only through the Hebrew Scriptures, but also because this God had revealed himself to him personally (Jeremiah 1).
In his prophecy, Jeremiah writes almost offhandedly about the workings of God—the one true God. As a side note, not even as the main point of his text, he mentions God causing the waters in the heavens to roar, raising up clouds as if his own hand lifts them up, sending lightning and rain, as though the wind is caged by his power.
Behind the ordinary events of nature, God is at work. There are not many gods, but one Creator. “It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom” (Jeremiah 10:12 ESV).
Suddenly our ordinary world takes on a deeper sentimentality. Rain doesn’t burst out of the clouds because April has come, but because God’s hand has sent it in a loving act of care for his creation. Clouds do not rise only on the basis of a scientist’s explanation. Wind and lightning are not merely “natural phenomena”—they are creative works of our Creator, willed by his Spirit as they happen.
Creation Reveals to Us the Glory of God
You may be able to write a publishable scientific treatise on how the laws of nature work to create rain, cloud, and wind, and yet Jeremiah reminds us, that behind that law stands the wisdom of God, for he “established the world by his wisdom” (Jeremiah 10:12).
“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…” (Romans 1:20 NIV)
When you see rain on your windshield, or watch a storm move across the screen of your device on the news, when you see lightning light up the sky, or watch the wind take up the leaves in the fall, consider that these events are personal—they are God’s work.
Give Thanks to Your Creator
What will you do with this knowledge of God that you have? Romans 1:21 tells us of a tragedy that happens within humans: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (ESV).
If in considering nature, you recognize the Divine whose glory shines through it all, and that light shines upon your heart, don’t run to mythology books where we have made gods in our own image, nor argue away your enlightenment as foolishness. Open the Bible where that Divine speaks and ask him to make himself known to you.