Psalm 29

"The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness"

If you've never experienced it, a West Texas thunderstorm is an awe-inspiring sight. 

I remember once, a few years ago, driving from Dallas back home to Abilene. The country is wide open. You can see from horizon to horizon. A huge storm front was moving toward me, miles off, filling the view in front of me. Boiling clouds piled high, and flashes of lightning flickered down illuminating the darkness. I'll never forget being able to take in the full expanse of that storm front.

Biblical scholars will tell you that, in poems like Psalm 29, we see how the ancient Hebrews were influenced by their Canaanite neighbors in depicting YHWH as a storm god. To be sure, Thor, to jump to a different culture, is a particular lens to gaze upon the Creator of the universe, a sliver of the whole. As it says in Psalm 29, "the voice of the Lord thunders" and "flashes flames of fire." The pagan visions of a storm God are not wrong, just partial and incomplete.

This insight, how paganism is a window upon the Creator, is wonderfully captured by "A Liturgy of Praise to the King of Creation" from Every Moment Holy, which starts:

Leader: Our names for you O Lord, have been too few—for seldom have we considered how specific is the exercising of your authority, extending as it does into the myriad particulars of creation.

People: There is no quarter over which you are not king.

And as creation hurtles toward its liberation and redemption, the full implications of your deep Lordship are yet to be revealed in countless facets unconsidered:

Christ, you are the Snow King.
You are the Maker of All Weathers.
You are The King of Sunlight and Storms,
The King of Grey Skies and Rain.
You are The Rain King,
The Sun King,
the Hurricane King.
You are the King of Autumn
and the King of Spring.

And our names for you
O Lord, have been too few.

The old and impotent gods
our ancestors once believed in were, at their best,
but imperfect pictures of you, whose strength
and goodness and creative majesty
and wonderful mystery and love exceed those
old rumors as sunlight exceeds the tiny dimness
of stars reflected in a dark and wavering pool.
The fairy tales crafted by our old cultures
hinted at you, though they knew it or not.
Yet their perfect princes and blessed ends were
yearnings for all that has found fulfillment in you.