You Drove Back the Seas

Psalm 104 tells us more about God in verses 6-9

You clothed the earth with floods of water,
water that covered even the mountains.
At the sound of your rebuke, the water fled;
at the sound of your thunder, it fled away.
Mountains rose and valleys sank
to the levels you decreed.
Then you set a firm boundary for the seas,
so they would never again cover the earth.

These words may not make much sense unless you pay attention to what it's saying about water and the seas. It's about the story of the Great Flood in the time of Noah, but that's really not the most important thing here. These verses say that God covered the earth with water, then rebuked the water, drove it away, carved out dry land and made sure the seas would never again cover the earth.

In the ancient world, the sea was viewed as a metaphor for evil and catastrophe (because of the almost worldwide ancient accounts of a massive flood that destroyed the world?). To drive back the sea and set a boundary so that it could never cover the earth again is a statement about God keeping us from the evils that would overwhelm us. But it leaves the door open for God to bring catastrophe on a smaller scale.

Because of God, we are not overwhelmed by the forces of nature and totally destroyed. Smaller incursions of the power of the seas happen, but somehow, in the midst of our stresses and challenges, God is preserving us from the cataclysm.

Awesome God

In the Bible, the Book of Psalms, 104, begins:

Praise the LORD, I tell myself;
O LORD my God, how great you are!
You are robed with honor and with majesty;

you are dressed in a robe of light.
You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;

you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds.
You make the clouds your chariots;
you ride upon the wings of the wind.

The winds are your messengers;
flames of fire are your servants.

You placed the world on its foundation
so it would never be moved.

The poetry of it is fabulous, but the message is even more significant. If there is a God who made this world, then our starting point has to be his majesty. In this Psalm, he's pictured as the master of the ancient basic elements - earth, wind, fire and water. He made them and they are under his total command.

A starting point like this changes everything. We are used to blaming him for all the stuff in our lives that goes wrong or accusing him of having abandoned us. We search for him and don't find him in the places where we are looking. Ultimately, we want to pull him down into our orbit so we can tell him a few things and maybe learn a few things from him. We want to domesticate him so that he can fit himself to our purposes and fulfill our dreams.

But he won't be tamed. He's Master of the Universe. He rides on the wings of the wind.