How often we hear ‘storm’ in the context of the Bible and instantly recall the thousand sermons and devotions about Jesus calming the storms in our lives (Mark 4:35-41). In the midst of these allegorical applications, we seem to associate the ‘storm’ as something that God will save us from, even suggesting these storms as representations of the chaos in our lives, storms that Jesus came to speak over, to bring a sense of peace to our lives.
But what if there are times when it’s actually the opposite? What if God is the causative agent of the storms in our lives? Supernatural interventions aimed at shaking us up; bringing us into the reality of what it means to live before the face of God with no escape hatch.
The story of Jonah is such an example and a close look at the Hebrew nuances shed light on this idea. Recalling Jonah 1:1-4 we read:
Now the Word of the LORD came to Jonah, son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, walk to Ninevah, the great city, and call out against her, for their evil has gone up before my face.’ But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from before the face of the LORD and he went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare, then he descended into it to go with them to Tarshish, from before the face of the LORD. But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea and there was a great tempest in the sea and the ship threatened to break. (My translation)
Focusing on the word הֵטִ֤יל translated ‘hurled’ we find this verb in the Hebrew to be in the Hiphil stem which is active and causative. This is significant. This verb shows that God יְהוָ֔ה is the active cause of the storm at this point of Jonah’s life. Interestingly, the wind that God uses to stir up the great tempest is shown to be a supernatural phenomenon. The word translated wind in this instance being רֽוּחַ is the same Hebrew word used for spirit or breath associated with God. We find this same wind or spirit, for example, in Genesis 1:2:
When the earth was a formless and desolate void, darkness was upon the face of the deep, but the Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters. (My translation)
While it’s true that God is ultimately in control of storms, not just in a meteorological sense but also in the lives of human beings, we find that he isn’t always interested in calming them. In fact, God is also interested in causing them, perhaps to wake us up and to call us back to the reality of his call on our lives.
Like Jonah, we cannot escape God, it’s a pointless and futile pursuit. Nowhere in the entire universe can we find a place to hide from his ever-present face. When God has a calling for our lives, we can choose to run, to live for ourselves, but ultimately God shows us through Jonah’s life that the concept of sovereign citizenship is a fantastical human construct.
So perhaps when storms enter our lives, we need to ask what God is doing in these moments. Maybe it’s not a storm he’s willing to calm. Maybe, dare I say it, he is active in the storms, stirring us up for his own purposes that so often contradict our own and the worlds.
Psalm 139: 7-12
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
