He Can Move the Mountains

The sky started out blue in the early morning hours, with patchy clouds sewn across the horizon. But before long, thick dark bands of gray marched in from the west. I could almost see the layers upon layers of clouds, like rows of enemy soldiers marching towards a battle front.

The wind picked up and then I heard it, faintly at first, rolling in from the distance. Quite quickly, the irregular thunderous drum roll increased in intensity and frequency. The cracking and booming grew, rolling across the landscape, bellowing from the clouds; the thunder brought with it the rain, slowly at first and then rapidly pelting the ground like machine gun fire. The storm had arrived just as I rounded the turn on to my street and home.

As a child, much like my own children, I was afraid of thunder. There was something hollow and deep and scary about it. As years went by, I convinced myself that it was "angels bowling" or "God moving furniture," but I was never fully satisfied.

Today, however, the cracking and the booming and the rolling sounded more like mountains moving. There are certainly a few mountains in my life that I could use moved. I had recently been thinking about the mountains that seemed to be between me and what I thought looked like a sweeter, gentler more peaceable time. The way over them looked too daunting. The way around too laborious. Oh, how I wish they could just be moved! (And I had asked God a time or twenty for just that thing).

But today I thought, "What if they are moving?" Maybe amidst all the noise and commotion that I witness from time to time in the circumstances of my life, God is moving the mountains that are before me out of the way. Maybe, just maybe, what I thought was not moving, really was, but it just was being done differently that I thought. (Imagine that!) God wasn't making the mountains disappear, but He was doing something.

Psalm 46:1-3 says, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging."

Today, when I heard the thunder, I also heard the gentle voice of God in it saying, "Does that thunder sound like mountains moving to you? Well, be assured, I am ever-present in your storms. The sounds you may be afraid of are not for you to fear. It is Me doing my work for you. Remember that when you fear the thunderous circumstances in your life, it is Me moving out of the way that which separates Me from you and you from you. I am moving that mountain, dear daughter. Trust Me."

When I feel as if all is crumbling apart and not going as I had hoped, I will chose to remember that perhaps what appears to be things falling apart, may actually be God moving the mountain. When my dreams and desires seem to be giving way, maybe God is placing them somewhere else to be better used for Him. Either way, no matter what, I know that on my walk with the Lord when the storms come, He is my refuge and my strength from the rains and from the winds, and I need not fear.