photo by Ian Britton

It rained the other day.  It had snowed a couple of days before that.  There was a magnificance in all of it that my heart discerned.  However, it seems that God today in my Scripture reading helped supply me with the expression to explain what I had sensed.  What a simple phenomenon that seems to fail to make us stop and wonder.  We can give a scientific account for the rains occurrence and yet that only serves to appease our natural curiosity of “how”.  Why is that?  How many of us have linked such a wonder to an expression of mercy or grace?  We know what happens when the rain refuses to fall.  Things die.  Water makes the life we know now possible.  It sustains us as human beings, but it also allows the nature we see everyday flourish.  Water is a gift and a blessing when given in good measure, the trees and flowers are likewise blessings, and the people who rely on the blessing of water in order to exist are likewise gifts.  But what are a lot of gifts compared to the one who gives them?  We are like the child at Christmas who eagerly tears apart the wrappings and bows with rising expectation of what is contained inside, but we forget the hands that wrapped it.  I fail a lot and often to look beyond the blessings to the One who blesses.  I fail to realize that in giving us these gifts, God in his mercy is imparting a grace upon us, in subtle ways he extends his hand towards us that we might turn to praise him.  Have we forgotten the gift Giver?  Where are the cries of blessings upon the Lord?  How has it come to this, that the things we are blessed with have ceased to draw our hearts upwards?  Today’s text is from Psalm 114 (ESV)

When Israel went out from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
Judah became his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

The sea looked and fled;
Jordan turned back.

The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

What ails you, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
O mountains, that you skip like rams?
O hills, like lambs?

Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water.

The one word that caught my attention was tremble.  The psalmist has commanded this of the earth and particularly in the presence (or the face) of God.  How many of us make this part of who we are as Christians?  Has trembling ever been a part of our experience, not only before the sheer exposure to nature, but to God in worship?  The psalmist begins with pointing to God’s redemption of His people from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.  We are reminded again of God’s mercy and His fulfillment of that good promise made to Abraham by way of covenant.  Why though should that make us tremble?  I think it is important to refer to another verse in the book of Jeremiah that uses the same Hebrew word “hul” (tremble)-

Do you not fear me? declares the Lord.
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea,
a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail;
though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;
they have turned aside and gone away.
They do not say in their hearts,
‘Let us fear the Lord our God,
who gives the rain in its season,
the autumn rain and the spring rain,
and keeps for us
the weeks appointed for the harvest.’
Your iniquities have turned these away,
and your sins have kept good from you.  (Jeremiah 5:22-25, ESV)

It is interesting that the use of the word tremble is used in these two passages within context of nature.  The sea “looks and flees” and “though the waves toss, they cannot prevail”.  God even asks why is their is no godly fear or trembling.  The Lord has given us the reason to tremble at his presence because of his work in nature.  It would seem that the similes we find in the Psalm hints at nature itself obediently being subject to God’s rule, so much so that it cannot go against what God has appointed.  We have something great being revealed to us about God.  God is so wonderful and terrifying that even nature itself “trembles” in his presence.  We can liken it to the view of God robed in His splendor in the temple before Isaiah in chapter six of that book. 

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robefilled the temple.  Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

      “ Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
      The whole earth is full of His glory!”

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
So I said:

      “ Woe is me, for I am undone!
      Because I am a man of unclean lips,
      And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
      For my eyes have seen the King,
      The LORD of hosts.”

Here was a man who knew fear and trembling.  Who saw God “high and exalted” and who in his fear cried out “Woe is me!”  What but only the very presence of God could drive a man to call down curses upon himself.  God “high and exalted” can only lead us to pronounce ourselves undone (that is every fiber of our being is unraveled).   Who are we to take lightly the presence of God in worship when even the seraphim, who stand ever before him, stand with their faces covered?  Praise to “the King, The Lord of hosts” “who gives rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain”, “who turns the rock into a pool of water , the flint into a spring of water.”  Truly the humble heart is the trembling heart.  God, make it so in your church and may it be part of who I am as a Christian.  Help me to tremble with outstretched hands as I receive your blessings you so wisely bestow upon me every single day.  Amen.