Psalm 18:13a
  The Lord thundered
    There was another apocalyptic day in Israel’s history when hailstones pounded the ground and thunder and lightning shook the earth. It is described in Exodus 9 and it is 8th of the plagues that came upon Egypt as God prepared Pharaoh to let His people go. It was the worst storm ever experienced in that land and it devastated crops and stripped the trees. All of the plagues came at different times of the year and this one probably happened in January – February when the flax and barley were becoming ripe.  Each of the plagues was a direct attack on the power of one of the demonic deities worshipped in Egypt and showed that God could, to put it in modern parlance, “make mincemeat of them”! 

We have previously reflected on one godly woman’s prayer, that of Deborah in Judges 5. There was another woman who perceived God as all powerful and all-knowing and she writes a very Psalm-like song of praise that can be found in 1 Samuel 2. It is Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who says that “The Most High will thunder from heaven; the Lord will judge the ends of the earth.” So these images that David creates here in Psalm 18, are not at all fanciful, he is describing events that actually happened, times and places where the Lord God Almighty demonstrated His power. In our modern, scientific and sophisticated age we rarely attribute the power of the forces of nature to the working of the hand of God. (By the way, it is satisfying to know that my wife’s names are Deborah Ann – literally Deborah Hannah – given to her prophetically, although by unbelieving parents.) Maybe it is time to wake up to the fact that everything that happens around us is caused and for a purpose. As human beings we can only take in a limited amount of information, our horizons are narrow, our understanding is confined to a tiny segment of all that is surrounds us in this world. So limited are we that we have to have specialists in every field of knowledge and all their discoveries simply open the doors to new possibilities. God is so intelligent that He knows it all and He controls it all. His mind and His plans are way beyond our imagination! Hallelujah. 

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