God in charge. A brief 3 sentence portrait of God’s power.
This is the majestic creator, who was before the world, who made the world: nothing’s happening to it unless he unmakes it.
I always think that certainty encourages environmentalism, out of honour for God’s creation. It does take some of the gamble out of climate change but not the imperative. The motive is love and rightness rather than peril.
His voice rises above the chaos. I’ve been reading the bible long enough to know that to old testament writers the sea is a metaphor for all the powerful things that aren’t God – they aren’t a seafaring nation, I doubt they even surfed.
Above the roar of other powers and threats, the voice of God. It’s not an image of calm, its a picture of anxiety and feeling overwhelmed, but having comfort and trust in something higher, bigger, louder.
God’s law and holiness, his truth, his rules, will outplay, outlast and outwit everything else.
BAM, a powerful vision.
But I feel the chaos. I have lived through many difficult circumstances, and things are quite settled now, but anxiety and glumness have a habit of moving into wherever you are and keeping a sense of control just out of reach. Just beyond your energy levels. Why won’t they be left behind?
Daisy wanted her driving licence but went backwards this week, she had her Learners, went for her Provisionals, but didn’t pass and now her Learners have expired. She had to do the L’s test again and failed. So, backwards.
She took it terribly, crying on the phone, and in public, which is understandable, but I think she scared herself a little at the strength of her pain. It connected to a larger pain of uncertainty, and the frustration of a bunch of other things constraining her.
All the kids are miserable, its a struggle to get Rennie to school many days. He seems like a sheep without a shepherd, but I find it so hard to shepherd him myself.
I’m struggling with energy levels at work, though I think I’m keeping up, not sure. I have a sense of there always being more opportunities than I can take advantage of, but being unfit to scope them. I’m in such a blessed spot!
Deary me, this powerful image of God, and all I have is sadness. But the psalmist didn’t write it because of the peaceful valley, he wrote it because of the sea, its for me. And the competing sounds are deafening:
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea—
the Lord on high is mighty.
Maybe its just me but I have a sense of straining to hear Jesus – the din of the chaos is immediate, no minor feat ignoring it.