A dead car battery. A sudden downpour and thunderstorm. A laying aside of plans. All part of this Thursday morning at our house. As for me, after a very good sleep, I had planned to drive to our mall this morning and continue in my genealogy research in the afternoon. I thought briefly of prioritizing writing and keeping genealogy till later as a reward, perhaps following up last week’s post, Considering Birds and Blooms, with something else to consider.
When Dave’s car wouldn’t start, I knew he needed to take mine and that I would be spending the day at home. Rain was in the forecast anyway and I had plenty of ancestors to learn about. A rain shower began as he was leaving for the office, quickly becoming a downpour accompanied by thunder, then subsiding before son Kyle got on his way to work.
I sat down with my coffee, wanting to spend some time with the Lord, glancing over a list I had made of things the Bible advises us to consider, remembering words from a great old hymn, one of the words being consider. My mom, who attended a recent funeral, had told me they sang “How Great Thou Art,” so I looked up the lyrics and sang the prayer aloud, beginning, “O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hand has made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art…“
Framed and hanging on my wall, a daily reminder.
Carl Boberg said of the writing of his song, “It was in 1885, and in the time of year when everything seemed to be in its richest coloring; the birds were singing in trees and wherever they could find a perch. On a particular afternoon, some friends and I had been to Kronobäck where we had participated in an afternoon service. As we were returning a thunderstorm began to appear on the horizon. We hurried to shelter. There were loud claps of thunder, and the lighting flashed across the sky. Strong winds swept over the meadows and billowing fields of grain. However, the storm was soon over and the clear sky appeared with a beautiful rainbow. After reaching my home, I opened my window toward the sea. The church bells were playing the tune of a hymn. That same evening I wrote a poem which I titled, ‘O Store Gud,’ (How Great Thou Art).” (from Story Behind the Song: How Great Thou Art)
In addition to the birds and the flowers, we are urged to consider the heavens with David (Psalm 8) and God’s wonders with Job, “Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders.” This is advice from Job’s friend, Elihu, who has listened to others talk on and on about the reasons for Job’s misery and now speaks, urging Job to recognize all that God has done. As he is proclaiming, “How great is God – beyond our understanding,” he, too, hears the rumbling of thunder and witnesses flashing lightning and attributes them to God. Then he asks Job, “Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?” As the storm ends, Elihu marvels, “Now no one can look at the sun, bright as it is in the skies after the wind has swept them clean.”
Then the LORD speaks.
Oh, please go with me into the book of Job and read of the wonders of creation – sea, snow, lightning, rain and hail, stars, roosters, lions, mountain goats, wild donkeys and wild ox, ostrich and horse. Job is humbled, as am I. How could I think that spending time doing genealogy research could be a reward for spending time in God’s Word, for considering all the works his hands have made, for acknowledging that in the midst of such wonders, he is mindful of me?
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on a Cross, my burdens gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
While speaking of the thunder, Elihu states in Job 37, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways, he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ So that everyone he has made may know his work, he stops all people from their labor.” As I think, even about the time I am spending at home since my surgery, unable to fulfill some of the commitments I had made, not yet ready to resume completely what was normal activity, Matthew Henry’s commentary on these verses hits hard:
The providence of God is to be acknowledged, both by husbandmen in the fields and travelers upon the road, in every shower of rain, whether it does them a kindness or a diskindness. It is sin and folly to contend with God’s providence in the weather; if he send the snow or rain, can we hinder them? Or shall we be angry at them? It is as absurd to quarrel with any other disposal of Providence concerning ourselves or ours. The effect of the extremity of…weather is that it obliges…men… to retire, making it uncomfortable and unsafe for them to go abroad. … that men, being taken off from their own work, may know his work, and contemplate that, and give him the glory of that, and, by the consideration of that work of his in the weather which seals up their hands, be led to celebrate his other great and marvelous works. Note, When we are, upon any account, disabled from following our worldly business, and taken off from it, we should spend our time rather in the exercises of piety and devotion (in acquainting ourselves with the works of God and praising him in them) than in foolish idle sports and recreations. When our hands are sealed up our hearts should be thus opened, and the less we have at any time to do in the world the more we should thereby be driven to our Bibles and our knees.
