One summer our family vacationed in Iowa to visit grandparents and other extended family. During a humid afternoon the adults found their way onto the front porch where we were swapping stories and laughing together. Some were sitting on the porch swing, others in lawn chairs and a couple were perched on the short patio wall. As is common in the Midwest, a localized, afternoon storm had formed resulting in a few dark clouds producing an occasional flash of lightning. No one seemed to notice the additional flit of light just south of us, which means that none of us anticipated what happened in the second that followed. A thunderclap cracked so violently that the over-compression caused our ribs to vibrate and our ears to ring. Our instincts were to dive to the ground except our senses, being wholly overwhelmed, froze us in silence.
With eyes like saucers and jaws suspended, we looked around at each other as we caught our breath and began to make sense of what we just experienced. My parents, who had lived their entire lives in the area, said they had never heard anything like it. In every sense of the word, we were thunderstruck.
Thunder is not to underestimated, including in the Bible. It is so mighty that, along with hail, it was imposed on Egypt as part of the seventh plague. “Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt” (Ex. 9:23). Pharoah was so overwhelmed that he begged Moses to ask God to make it stop. He demanded, “Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.” (Ex. 9:28)
When Moses summitted Mount Sinai to meet God face-to-face, the mountaintop, covered in a thick cloud, was accompanied by thunder and lightning. “All the people in the camp trembled” (Ex. 19:16). And a few verses later, in response to Moses it says, “God answered him in thunder.”
Thunder was used as judgment outside of Egypt as well. In 1 Samuel 2:10, Hannah prophesied that “The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; against them He will thunder in heaven.” That was fulfilled when, in 1 Samuel 7:10 it reads, “As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the LORD thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion, and they were defeated before Israel.”
Thunder is a sign of authority. Job repeatedly refers to it when declaring God’s power over creation. He writes of the “thunderings of [God’s] pavilion” and that “He thunders with His majestic voice.” In Psalm 18:13 God “thundered in the heavens and the Most High uttered His voice.” And Isaiah warned that rebels would be visited “by the LORD of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire” (Is. 29:6).
Do you, like Hannah, Job and Isaiah, meditate on the breathtaking magnitude of God? Do you contemplate the intensity of His incalculable force? Do you find yourself thunderstruck by God?
Don’t allow familiarity lead to apathy about God’s greatness. In your prayers acknowledge that God rules over the thundering of the heavens, that He speaks with power in thunder, that He delivers judgment through thunder and that peals of thunder declare His glory. Every time you hear its sound, take a moment to appreciate the almighty power of our thundering God!
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.” (Rev. 19:6)