I like thunderstorms! I like the sky: looming dark and ominous with blackened clouds, the wind: whipping up and causing leaves to swirl and branches to bend, and then the rain: pelting down, hard and furious.

What I like best about thunderstorms is seeing God’s power in them.

I love how He displays His power in creation: towering trees and soaring mountains; crashing waves at the beach and huge rock formations in the canyons.

The hymn, “How Great Thou Art”, was originally written as a poem in 1886 by a Swedish pastor, Carl Boberg. In 1953 it was translated into English and set to music by a British missionary, Stuart K. Hine. Here is the first stanza:

O Lord my God, when I, in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds Thy hand hath made

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder

Thy pow’r throughout the universe displayed

That’s our God: the maker of heaven and earth!

It is He who made the earth by His power,

Who established the world by His wisdom,

And by His understanding He stretched out the heavens.

When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,

And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth;

He makes lightning for the rain,

And brings forth the wind from His storehouses.

Jeremiah 51:15-16

God is the maker of creation, and His power is displayed simply in the creation itself. But His power is magnified by the fact that He controls all that He’s created. We can rest in that knowledge; we can take comfort from it and be encouraged by it.

About twice a month I drive to Great Falls for my job. It’s a pretty drive, with the Missouri River on one side of the road and rough-hewn mountainside on the other. At the halfway point is the little town of Craig, and at the edge of this town is the place where the river crosses under a bridge and now runs next to the mountains. When I go over this bridge, I like to look back over my right shoulder to a bend in the river, to the spot where the power of God became real to a group of Christians and their families.

Several years ago at this place, a group was floating down the river in large inflatable boats: teenagers, their youth leaders, the youth pastor and his wife. Dark clouds started swiftly rolling in, and just as the decision was made to get off the water, lightning struck one of the boats. It struck the youth pastor, entering his temple and exiting his thigh and leaving him with no heartbeat or breath. It hit four of the teens, the force of the bolt throwing some of them from the boat.

One of the boys, who got struck and flung from the boat, climbed back in and started CPR on the pastor. Another one of the boys that got hit was my son Max. My son Ryan was in one of the other boats, and he was able to use someone’s cell phone to call 911, in an area that is known for not having cell service. The pastor’s wife was right next to someone who got struck, but she was spared; she and the baby she was carrying, which the doctors said wouldn’t have survived the hit.

The pastor came to after the efforts of the CPR; he was airlifted back to the hospital, where he was hospitalized for awhile. He had temporary hearing loss and singed hair, both long gone, but he’s left with a jagged, lightning bolt scar that travels the length of his torso. The teens that were struck were taken to the hospital by ambulance. They were examined, tested, and released after test results came back okay. They came through their ordeal with varying degrees of burns – like bad sunburns – wherever the lightning went in. For Max, it was in his feet and up to his knees.

For all of us that day, we saw the power of God in the strength of the storm, but we saw that power greatly magnified in His direct authority and precise control over the lightning bolt. He is awesome!