The Storm of God

We’ve had quite a few big storms as of late, complete with strong winds, thunder, lighting, and heavy rain. I personally love storms. Every aspect of them. After all, it is a complete package. Often times people like rain for the refreshment it brings, but don’t like the depressing gray clouds. Others like the beauty of the lightning, but the scary thunder and inherent danger of electrocution. Still other like the sun after the rain, but don’t particularly care for the howling winds that blow the clouds away. But we can’t pick and choose the parts of a storm that we want. They are what they are. It is the natural cycle for them to occur.

And as I lay in bed listening to the pounding rain, seeing the flashes of lightning, and hearing the thunder in the distance it occurred to me that many approach God similarly. We will take the love and mercy but could do without the wrath, judgment, and holiness. But God is a package deal. You can’t have the love with out the discipline. You can’t have the grace without the holiness.

And I don’t always know how to reconcile the paradox that is God, but I have come to understand that I can’t pick and choose what seems best to me. The passages of the Bible I would like to explain away still reside to paint a full picture of God. I think such writings exist because God wanted them to exist—in tension, forcing us to wrestle with them. Forcing us to accept Him not piecemeal, but as an entity that we can’t easily explain or easily acknowledge as the God of the Universe. Forcing us to have faith that the God we believe in, the God we serve, and the God whom we can’t explain entirely has necessary qualities that we must accept as part of the experience of who God is.