The Outskirts

This evening I stood next to my son as he worked away at his Sunday night homework assignment. He scribbled away, drawing and labeling diagrams on a massive poster board spread across our desk by the door. His quiet study was interrupted when we heard a roar coming from outside.

As we pulled the door open to investigate we discovered a massive wind ripping through the branches of the monstrous fir trees that stand tall around our house. We saw hay tarps flapping and snapping in the wind and metal doors swaying and clanging at each gust.

What a powerful wind

All at once, the white noise of the wind was silenced by the rush of thumping raindrops, and then by hail pelting the metal roof of the hay barn and angrily slapping every surface.

What a powerful hail

 

A mist of damp filled the air as water splashed up from the hail and rain pounding the gathered pools of rain.  All at once in the darkness the mist lit up with flashes of lightning and peals of thunder.

What a powerful storm

I stood on the porch in awe, feeling the mist and damp whipped by the wind all around me, amidst the flashes of light and the thumps of power, marveling…

What a powerful God

Honestly, I have grown slightly disillusioned to the process of waiting on God to direct us to our new home and ministry. I have been reading in Job and came across a passage in chapter 26 where Job is reflecting similarly on the power of God over death, space, the earth, its clouds, mountains and seas. Then he says something that shook me when I read it…

“Behold, these are but the outskirts of His ways,

                        and how small a whisper do we hear of Him…”

                                                -Job 26:14a

Amazing to think that the things that arrest our attention, capture our intrigue, mystify our senses and make us say “Wow, what an amazing God” these are only the “outskirts of His ways”, only a taste of God’s power, wisdom and works.

God’s creative genius on display all around us is only the boarder of greater ways, it seems as though creation is pictured as the very exterior edge of all that God has done and is doing. Job’s statement comes from the heart of a man who longed to understand more of what God was doing behind the scenes of life.

Sometimes circumstances can confuse and disorientate us. When life turns upside down and hope begins to fade and your resolve drifts toward indifference, remember… The mighty work that God has done in creation is but a hint of God’s creative glory and wisdom in action toward us.

Today my lesson is this:

When I can’t see what God is doing, look at what I can see. And understand that “these things are but the outskirts of His ways.”