God’s Glory Does Not Always Seem Glorious At First

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Today’s reading: Psalm 104:24-33

I remember my wife taking strong objection to a TV news commentator’s off hand assertion in 2010 that God “killed” thousands of people in that year’s devastating earthquake in Haiti.

“God didn’t kill those people!” she yelled at the TV.

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Cheryl didn’t object when I just turned off the television, and we sat silently for a while.

Finally, she said again, “God doesn’t kill people!”

And we both got up to go about our day.

My mind returns to this troubling scene every time I hear the news of some natural disaster in which people do, in fact, die.

If God doesn’t kill those people, I wonder, who does?

Today’s reading helps me resolve this conflict. All I need to do is focus on the how the Psalmist refers to  Leviathan.

Elsewhere in The Bible, Leviathan is a large and sinister sea monster.

“Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?  His back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass between.They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn. Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.” (Job 41: 14-21)

But in today’s reading he sounds playful.

“Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great.  There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.”

Leviathan is not out to destroy the ships and the people aboard — though it may see so to those on the ships. Rather, he is simply “sporting.” I know plenty of kind-hearted fishermen who do this same thing when they go out on the water for a fun-filled day of “catch-and-release.”

So, it’s clear that God’s “killing” of people is just a matter of our perspective.

If we stay connected to God, we see, like the Psalmist,  that all things are good — even death. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other “acts of God” all have a glorious purpose, and our inability to understand that purpose with our human senses doesn’t diminish the glory.

Anyone who questions this assertion can simply turn to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion: Did God kill his son? Well, yes, physically speaking, He did. But the glorious purpose of that “killing” turned out to be an eternal blessing for the world.

All of this brings to mind a common word-usage error upon which I will close today’s devotional. Several of my fellow English geeks and I can be regularly counted upon to remind people that the word “tragedy” is never appropriate for describing natural disasters, or any calamity not caused by human error or sin.  Tragedies are always the result of some human behavior or thought that runs counter to The Truth, and natural disasters leave no human to blame. Wars, murders, bombings — those are tragedies. Hurricanes,earthquakes, and droughts, meanwhile, are just part of God’s glory that we don’t understand. But all we really need to understand about them is summed up  beautifully in today’s reading:

When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works– (Verses 30-31)

Thanks be to God, as always, for everything — even the things that I don’t understand.