Dallas yards featured wide cracks in the summer of 2011. This summer, they’re more likely to display roofing company signs—hundreds dot some neighborhoods. There’s been relief from extreme drought in parts of Texas, though the extreme remains.
As in too many places across the U.S. in recent months, rains come by way of dangerous storms with sudden high winds, crushing hail and fearsome amounts of lighting. A July storm in New York City delivered a thousand lightning strikes within fifteen minutes.
Isaiah 64:11-12 laments: “All our pleasant places have become ruins. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord?”
Many Americans might think and pray similar words. We see them on the nightly news, in different cities every day it seems, with the report of each new weather disaster. A micro-burst rips apart the staging at a concert in one city. A dangerous cloud sends graduates running from the field in another.
This could be, as the newscasters suggest: “Weather gone wild.” Freak and ferocious winds materialize out of nowhere. One-hundred-year floods sweep away cars, homes and lives. Fires refuse to retreat. Intense heat buckles highways.
Even if that’s the case, God is in control of the weather. It’s His to contain and release. But why would He allow weather to go wild?
Weather disasters have become, like sexual deviation and violence, mainstream.
In II Chronicles 15:1-7 the Spirit of God provided an explanation for the troubles experienced by the regions of Judah and Benjamin. “The LORD is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” (ESV)
The passage says the people fell away from God and his laws. Peace departed and “great disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. They were broken in pieces . . . city by city, for God troubled them with every sort of distress.”
God caused their distresses? That’s a troubling realization—destruction from His loving hands.
Our nation might be under God’s heavy hand of judgment. Yet our society in general appears too stiff-necked to acknowledge God’s actions—or inactions—concerning these weather woes.
The Lord revealed some heavenly secrets to Job, including “storehouses of hail . . . reserved for the time of trouble.
In Job 38:35 God challenges Job with the question: “Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’?”
God can. He calls forth troops of lightning. And they report for duty.
Blue Ribbon News special contributor Patti Richter works as journalist, writing news and feature stories, book reviews and more for many Christian publications. She lives in Heath with her husband Jim.
Read more by Patti Richter:
God’s not-so-random acts of kindness
In unity on National Day of Prayer
Of Snakes & Pumpkins: even a perfect fall day is made better with prayer
To submit your news, events, or a guest column, email editor@BlueRibbonNews.com.
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