Job 37: 1-5 Gifts of the Dark Wood: The Gift of Being Thunderstruck

Back in mid- February, I had the privilege of being a counselor at a youth retreat at Wesley Forest, a place that is dear to my heart. The theme of the weekend was “Recharge”, but the speaker made a great point - we need to get to the point where we aren’t just going from mountain top to mountain top experiences with God, looking for God to speak there and forgetting that God speaks to us in a variety of ways all the time. 

I think we can all name a mountain top experience in our lives - those times when you felt incredibly close to God and like you and God were just in sync. Most of my mountain top experiences have happened out in nature. Times like watching an unexpected sunrise and feeling the presence of God. Or being at Creation, at outdoor Christian concert held in Pennsylvania, and watched thousands of candles being held out into the darkness and thinking about the overwhelming light of Christ. 

But the problem is that we can’t live on the mountain top. As the speaker at the youth retreat point out, there is life to be lived, and we need to be able to seek God’s presence wherever we may find ourselves. 

Another way to describe mountain top experiences is being thunderstruck. Think about ancient mythology stories - where did the voice of the gods come from? Usually thunder and lightening. Friends, a lot of us crave being thunderstruck. We think it would be so much easier if God would just speak directly to us, and in a way that we cannot miss. We want sudden experiences of the Divine where God shows up in a mighty way that leads us to moments of profound insight.

Job describes such an experience in today’s scripture passage. Remember that Job is a devout believer in God. But the Devil gets into a discussion with God about why Job is faithful to God in the first place and the Devil poses an interesting question - maybe Job only follows God because God has blessed him. So God said that the Devil could test Job to prove that it isn’t just because of the blessings that Job and God are close. God said that anything could be done to Job short of killing him, and one by one, Job finds the things dear to him in this world being stripped away - his sons, his lively hood, his health, his friendships, until we arrive about at this point in the story where it is literally just Job and God, and Job is wondering when God is going to show up in that mighty way. This chapter comes right before God answers all of these questions that Job has been posing about where God has been and why God has allowed any of this to happen, so here in this chapter Job is explaining what it feels like for him when God shows up - his heart leaps out of its place, there a sound like thunder that comes from the mouth of God, and God does great things that we cannot comprehend. 

Job is going through the most horrific experience of his life, but he is confident that God is going to show up, even in the midst of the storm. But I think we miss the point sometimes friends, just like Job missed the point in a way. When we expect God to show up, we miss the fact that God has been with us all along. And I think that is part of what the season of Lent, this time of preparing ourselves exists for to open us up to realize that God is always with us, not just in the thunder and lightning and mountain top experiences.

Pastor Eric Elnes, who wrote the book that inspired this sermon series, wrote “The purpose [of being thunderstruck] was not to explain where lightening and thunder come from but to explain where the voice of God comes from, and more important, how it comes to us through intuition.” One of the question I have had posed to me as a pastor, and I would guess that just about every pastor gets asked from time to time in a variety of different ways is, why doesn’t God speak like He did in the Bible anymore? We live in a society that is craving for God to speak in some thunder and lightening ways - but guess what folks that wasn’t the whole story. God didn’t always speak in the same way in scripture. We are told that he spoke in dramatic ways to some people like Abraham, but then other times God was present not in the thunder, lightening, fire and theatrics, but in the still small voice, like the prophet Elijah. And we believe as Christians that God was present in Jesus Christ, who was fully divine and fully human. and he spoke in an audible voice, but it didn’t make it any easier for people to listen to him, in fact, he hung on a cross for what he had to say. 

Other times God moved through people’s intuition or though the voices of other people. One of my favorite books in the Bible is Esther, which ironically does not even motion the name of God even once. But Esther was key in helping to save the Jewish people from complete destruction because she listened to the voice of her cousin, Morachi, and used her God-given intuition to serve God. 

Other times God speaks to us through the word of God, the scriptures. I am from the Untied Methodist Tradition which celebrates Aldersgate Day once a year - marking the time that John Wesley found his heart strangely warmed by Martin Luther’s words about Paul’s epistle to the Romans. It may not have been an audible voice, but it changed his life. 

Its like we want to be hit with a 2 by 4 with God’s will for us, friends, and that isn’t the only way that God speaks or acts. A lot of time we are taking baby steps with God, listening for God’s word for us as we inch along. In fact, John of the Cross, one of the saints of the church, puts our walk with God in these terms, “If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” We want to hear an audible voice, because we have convinced ourselves that is the only way we can know what God wants from us, when really it takes a whole lot more trust to listen for our heart being strangely warmed and that still small voice. 

Eric puts its this way, “While it is true that the Holy Spirit does, at times, invite you to take a leap into the Great Unknown, the Spirt rarely does this without leading you to the edge of the cliff by way of a thousand smaller steps.” Friends, we need to take time, starting this Lenten season, to notice the million of ways that God is speaking to us every day. We, yes, most certainly need to be attentive to the mountain top experiences and thunderstruck moments, but we need to also see how God is speaking to us every single day. In fact, the Untied Church of Christ, reminds us of that in their slogan from a few years ago, “God is still speaking.” Do you believe that? Do you believe that God is still speaking at the highest mountains and our deepest despairs and everything in between? Because if you don’t believe that God is still speaking then you are never going to hear him, metaphorical 2 by 4 or not. May we open up our ears, hearts, and souls to listen for God’s still small voice. Amen.