Sarah E. Westfall

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A Gentle Fury

FINDING FREEDOM IN A MYSTERIOUS GOD

Stop and consider God’s wonders.
Do you know how God directs his clouds
or makes their lightning flash?
Do you understand how the clouds float,
those wonderful works of him who has perfect knowledge?
—Job 37:14–16 (CSB)

A giant oak tree stands just beyond our backyard. Its branches have become our gauge for just how windy it is outside. Fluttering leaves generally indicate a light breeze, barely noticeable but requiring a light jacket. However, when the wind really picks up, the tree begins its gymnastics, limbs bending and swaying, dropping its most brittle members.

When the old oak flails, my oldest son inevitably runs into the backyard to stare not at the tree, but at the horizon. His eyes turn upward, his palms sweaty, as he looks for signs of inclement weather—an anxiety he has unfortunately inherited from me.

The moment a dark front looms in the distance, creeping closer, turning the sky green, and hushing the birds’ once-pleasant song, I grow anxious. As much as I try to console my son, as much as I rationalize to the both of us why those clouds don’t contain tornadoes and that we have a basement just in case, my words fail to convince the tension in my shoulders.

My fears haven’t lessened with age. Just a few nights ago, a crash of thunder woke me from a deep sleep, and I immediately sat upright clutching my blanket as rain pelted our bedroom window. “Just a thunderstorm,” I told myself. “We knew this was coming.”

I took a few deep breaths and settled my head back on my pillow, pulling the comforter up around my nose. I closed my eyes, trying to will myself back to sleep but to no avail as “what ifs” whispered in the dark.

What if the storm wakes up the boys?

What if we don’t have time to get to the basement?

What if the meteorologists were wrong?

Storms always seem worse at night. My inability to see beyond our streetlamp heightens my fear—as if seeing the storm would provide a measure of control over it.

Who was to say that an unpredictable fury was not right outside?

UNDERSTANDING THE SKY

What’s strange about clouds is that the ones closest to us are both the most familiar and the most fearsome. We are going to geek out for a moment now so bear with me (I have a thing for clouds…). The troposphere—the lowest level of our atmosphere—is where cumulous clouds form and float through the blue sky like cotton candy on parade, spurring the imagination and making us smile. These are the clouds we like to draw, the ones that cause my youngest son to stop and point, “Mama, look!”

But the troposphere is also home to cumulonimbus clouds. These giants of the sky loom “heavy and dense” and are “often harbingers of thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes.”[2] These are the clouds we avoid, the ones that produce fear and send me and my son scrambling for the basement.

The closer the clouds, the more intimately aware we are of their effects.

Even in my late(ish) thirties, my mind, body, and emotions struggle to reconcile both the peace and power of clouds. Light and darkness, familiar and fearful—both reactions are so visceral. The tension is confusing at best, causing me to look at the sky and wonder: Could these seemingly opposite clouds really come from the same fundamental elements interacting between heaven and earth?

I’ve asked similar questions about God.

RECONCILING OPPOSITES

For two years, I’ve been slowing reading through both the Old and New Testament in an effort to understand how the God who wiped out nations is the same God who washed the feet of his disciples. I often struggle to reconcile the God of compassion with the God of power—one familiar, one fearsome.

But as it turns out, my questions aren’t new. The Israelites also experienced this dichotomy. As a cloud, God led them out of Egypt, shielded them from Pharaoh’s armies, dwelled in the tabernacle, and led them through the wilderness, but this same God also made them quake.

Right before God outlined his covenant with Moses and his people—better known as the Ten Commandments, the Lord asked Moses to have the people gather near the base of Mount Sinai.

The time came for the people to go to the mountain, but what they found was not quite what they expected. In Exodus 19:16–19 (CSB), we read:

On the third day, when morning came, there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people in the camp shuddered. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke because the Lord came down on it in fire. Its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder.

God’s presence at the base of Mount Sinai was anything but comforting. In fact, the Israelites were so shaken by their experience, they backed away, telling Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but don’t let God speak to us, or we will die.”[1] Moses tried to reassure them that God had their best interest in mind—but they remained at a distance.

They seemed to have their doubts. Was this really the same God cloud they’d followed day after day in the desert? Could he be trusted after all?

Perhaps that same questions echoes inside your own mind.

GETTING OVER EITHER-OR

From God to clouds to politics, our Westernized human brains like to think of so many things—including the Divine—in terms of “either-or.” God is either for us or against us, either forgiving or judging, either loving or hating, either now or then, present or unseen. You get the picture.

But God isn’t contained to our finite categories.

His presence takes many forms, one no less than the other. Operating in the realm of both-and, Divinity dances through the sky able to hold both justice and peace, joy and sorrow, blessing and consequence, power and compassion. The God who arrives with lightning and thunder is the same God who dwells and provides, who leads us through life’s wilderness.

God is not either-or, but I AM.[3]

We as humans have come up with so many different names for God because we cannot find one that encapsulates all he is—and rightly so. Not even God used descriptors when Moses asked him for a name, but responded simply with “I AM WHO I AM.” Other versions translate it “I AM BECAUSE I AM” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.”[4]

God is God. Nothing on earth, no human word, can contain all that he is.

That often makes us uncomfortable.

Often we want to replace I AM with a hippie, cartoon version of Jesus. We long to peace out, love, and pass the wine in the puffy clouds and forget that Jesus was the embodiment of God. The same God who dined with prostitutes and had failed fishermen as his closest friends was also the God of Mount Sinai, the dense cloud that shook the ground and spoke in thunder. Jesus had more than compassion; he had the power of the heavens at his feet.

And wouldn’t you know it, God declared Jesus’ authority in none other than a cloud.

Standing on yet another mountain, Jesus’ appearance changed right in front of Peter, James, and John. All questions of his fleshly origins dissipated as Jesus’ face radiated light “like the sun,” even his travel-worn clothes changed to a brilliant white.[5] The veil between heaven and earth was lifted even further as Moses and Elijah appeared next to Jesus, and a bright cloud enveloped them all.

From that cloud, a Voice announced, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him!”[6] Like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, the three disciples were filled with terror and fell facedown into the mountain terrain. In the cloud, the disciples saw their familiar Jesus transformed, their spiritual eyes able to see perhaps for the first time who he really was—all of him.

Jesus was not “one-third” God, but all the I AM.

God is not divided but One whose manifestations we have only begun to see.

Accepting the peaceful comfort of God’s nearness without his power and authority minimizes who he is. It paints a picture of God on our terms, as if he were of human origin or as malleable as playdough. While that version of the Divine may seem more palatable, that is not the I AM. He is a Gentle Fury.


LIVING WITH MYSTERY

You may be squirming, and I get it. This mystery is uncomfortable. Holding what appears to be opposites may not be natural. We want answers and definitions. Absolutes. Something to wrap our fingers around.

But what if knowing God begins not with well-constructed answers but with raw and unfiltered questions?

How might our relationships with God and with each other change if we became more comfortable with a blurry image of his fullness rather than something we can color between the lines?

What I think we might find is freedom, not only with God but in other parts of our lives as well. We remove the burden of perfect theology off our backs and learn to breathe deeply of what’s in front of us. We hold goodness and adversity with open hands, believing God can be in them both. We read God’s Word with new fervor because we long to know him as he says he is and to become more comfortable with the parts that just plain don’t make sense. We ask God our questions but discover that even the best answer is no match for his nearness.

Perhaps that is the only answer we need.

And as this shift occurs, God is no longer “a thing to be grasped” but a relationship to pursue.[7] Our individual pursuits of “knowing” transform into the corporate joy of being—enjoying the presence of God and of each other, a mysterious taste of the heaven-meets-earth life that God wanted for us all along.


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NOTES

[1] Exodus 20:18–21 (CSB)

[2] Catherine Zuckerman, “Clouds, explained,” National Geographic, April 24, 2019, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/earths-atmosphere/clouds/#close

[3] Exodus 3:13–14

[4] Ibid, including footnote in the Christian Standard Bible.

[5] Matthew 17:2 (CSB)

[6] Matthew 17:5–6 (CSB)

[7] Philippians 2:6 (ESV)

feature image by Michael Weidner via unsplash


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