What does a whirlwind have to do with God’s hope for our lives?
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” – Job 38:1
Throughout the Bible, God speaks in different and strange ways. Sometimes the voice of God is heard from a cloud, one time from a burning bush, another time in the sound of sheer silence. But in the book of Job, God eventually speaks from a Whirlwind. There is something significant about the voice of God emerging from a whirlwind because whirlwinds are these violent, destructive weather patterns that suck everything inward.
As the winds swirl and blow, all sorts of items get absorbed into the vortex. You’ve seen the pictures and the movies. Remember that movie “Twister” from the early 90’s where even the cow gets sucked into the whirlwind? That’s how whirlwinds work-- they pull everything inward.
Don’t the worries and anxieties of this life tend to have the same force? When our life is hit with one tough moment after another we can quickly get to the point where all that we see is our own despair. Tragedy and trauma seem to create their own weather systems in our lives and they can easily suck us in so that we are unable to consider anything else. The only thing we can think about is how difficult our lives have gotten; how painful the situation is.
That’s why this moment in Job seems so significant to me; because God is in the whirlwind. When we get sucked in by the stressors of life, God is there. In recognizing that God is there we are also connected with the larger truth: that God is bigger than our whirlwinds.
When we get sucked into the whirlwinds of life, one of the most powerful things we can do is zoom out. We get out of our spiraling thoughts, we stop getting sucked in by the stress, and instead, we remember the God who is always bigger than our problems.
We zoom out and remember that all of this world rests in the hands of God. We zoom out so that we can see that even though it all feels out of control, God is still in control. We zoom out and recognize that our struggles and problems will not last forever. We zoom out so that we can remind ourselves that even in death God has claimed victory. No problem is bigger than our God.
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” – Job 38:1
Throughout the Bible, God speaks in different and strange ways. Sometimes the voice of God is heard from a cloud, one time from a burning bush, another time in the sound of sheer silence. But in the book of Job, God eventually speaks from a Whirlwind. There is something significant about the voice of God emerging from a whirlwind because whirlwinds are these violent, destructive weather patterns that suck everything inward.
As the winds swirl and blow, all sorts of items get absorbed into the vortex. You’ve seen the pictures and the movies. Remember that movie “Twister” from the early 90’s where even the cow gets sucked into the whirlwind? That’s how whirlwinds work-- they pull everything inward.
Don’t the worries and anxieties of this life tend to have the same force? When our life is hit with one tough moment after another we can quickly get to the point where all that we see is our own despair. Tragedy and trauma seem to create their own weather systems in our lives and they can easily suck us in so that we are unable to consider anything else. The only thing we can think about is how difficult our lives have gotten; how painful the situation is.
That’s why this moment in Job seems so significant to me; because God is in the whirlwind. When we get sucked in by the stressors of life, God is there. In recognizing that God is there we are also connected with the larger truth: that God is bigger than our whirlwinds.
When we get sucked into the whirlwinds of life, one of the most powerful things we can do is zoom out. We get out of our spiraling thoughts, we stop getting sucked in by the stress, and instead, we remember the God who is always bigger than our problems.
We zoom out and remember that all of this world rests in the hands of God. We zoom out so that we can see that even though it all feels out of control, God is still in control. We zoom out and recognize that our struggles and problems will not last forever. We zoom out so that we can remind ourselves that even in death God has claimed victory. No problem is bigger than our God.
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