Job 37

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Elihu spends the last part of chapter 36 and all of this chapter describing a storm. I think he must have been describing an actual storm that was approaching, because in the very next chapter, God speaks to Job out of the storm. In my mind, I could just imagine this grand, glorious storm sweeping across the plain, becoming the backdrop for the next part of Elihu’s speech—the terrible majesty of God. I bet Elihu never expected God to be in the storm.

There’s a lesson there, I think. After all, isn’t a storm the perfect metaphor to describe Job’s suffering? Storms are unpredictable, sometimes appearing almost out of nowhere. Wild, uncontainable, and sometimes dangerous, they throw our environment into chaos. They remind us that nature can sometimes run amok. And that’s what happened to Job. He was thrown into the midst of an unpredictable, wild, chaotic situation. One minute, his life was going along normally. The next minute, everything was blown to pieces.

But, as Job and his friends found out when the Lord began speaking, God is in the storm. He is right there in the midst of suffering, not distant and removed, but present. His presence in the storm also reminds us that—ultimately—He is in charge of all the storms that come to us. We observed that in the first two chapters of Job during the exchange between God and Satan. Satan may have brought the storms to Job’s life, but he was unable to do anything without God’s knowledge and approval.

This is a good thing for us to remember. Even when we are in the midst of what looks like chaos and destruction, we can trust that God is right in the middle of it with us. And that’s why we can find peace, even in the midst of a storm. There is a calm we can have, knowing that all the storms in life are still subject to the great Creator.

Job’s friends could never have imagined a God who resided in the storm. It was their contention that a storm in life (suffering) meant that their friend had either been abandoned by or turned his back on God. They couldn’t imagine a storm and God together. But that is the story of our lives on this planet. We are living in the midst of the storm—but we are not there alone. Because of the testimony of Job, we know Who lives in the midst of the storm, and out of it, He speaks.