The Secret Place of Thunder
“In distress, you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder” Psalm 81:7
There’s this thing about the Bible. You can read the same stuff a hundred times without connecting with it, and then one day a phrase you are just skimming past leaps off the page at you, nearly startling you, and you wonder if it has always been there. Why had you never seen this before? Surely you’ve experienced this too?
To be honest, I was a little bored when I started reading Psalm 81 the other day. The Israelites are being called upon to “sing aloud” and “shout for joy.” Yeah, not feeling any of that today. But in the part of the poem when God starts speaking, He reminds the Israelites that “I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket.” I began to notice, maybe even feeling a little guilty that I was unable to remember and appreciate all the remarkable ways God has been with me, has delivered me, has shown His goodness to me. Why can’t I feel joyful today? But then I came to this verse: “In distress, you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder.”
Wait, what? I instantly put the Bible down and just sat back in my chair— totally startled. This was all I needed from God that day. I didn’t need to read another word. God had spoken to my heart. I was Nathaniel, open-mouthed when Jesus looked at him with compassion and said, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree (John 1:48).” Only Jesus and Nathaniel knew what that meant… and that it would be all Nathaniel needed to accept Him as Messiah.
Without having to do any deep dive study of what this phrase might have meant to the ancient Israelites, I knew exactly what it meant for me. Earlier in the week, I poured out my troubles to my spiritual director. I was trying to come up with an analogy to describe how my grief felt so overwhelming at times, how I felt like I was drowning. I lamented, “It’s like I was so brave when the lightning hit. I felt unfazed, strong, and non-reactive. But now in the responsive thunder, I’m hiding in my closet, quivering and crying my eyes out.” In all my crying out for deliverance from the pain, I was feeling no relief. Why couldn’t God just make the pain stop?
Scientifically, we know that thunder is the grumbling, growling sounds that come from the rapid reorganizing of air that has been rent by a bolt of lightning. The lightning may or may not be a powerfully destructive force, depending on where it strikes. But the thunder is nature’s insistence on restoration and healing, knitting the torn sky back together, seeking a return to homeostasis. The sound of restoration can be terrifying.
When something traumatic happens in our lives, when we lose someone or something we have loved for a very long time for example, (yep, that’s me) the rippling after-effects of that loss can be long-lasting and surprisingly intense, even if we were able to handle the initial shock without noticeable damage. Karyn Arnold, founder of Grief in Common writes, “It’s easy to feel like there’s nothing to do about grief. Put it in the closet, stuff it under the bed, hide it away, and forget about it…if you’re too busy with other things that need your immediate attention it may just feel like mourning is a luxury you can’t afford. But here’s the bottom line: grief is very patient and will wait for you until every part of it has been fully realized. The grief you’re feeling now may just be the grief that was there before, only now you have more time to sit with it.”
Of course, my nerdy curiosity later compelled me to also explore what thunder signified to the ancient Hebrews. Biblically, thunder almost always connects to a manifestation of God’s presence. Thunder was often the way that people heard the voice of God when they weren’t able for some reason to experience Him as He really was. When God audibly spoke to Jesus before a crowd, many only heard thunder (John 12:29). Similarly, the Israelites experienced God’s voice as thunder at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19). But what the people heard as ominous, Jesus and Moses received quite differently. Jesus of course experienced the love and affirmation of God declaring, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” And while the Israelites trembled and fled, begging Moses to advocate for them, “Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:18-21) After the burning bush episode where Moses met God for the first time, he is never again described as being afraid to approach God, even into the thick fiery darkness where God was waiting for him. But Exodus 33 gives us a glorious glimpse of what was happening in that hidden place, “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”
If, metaphorically speaking, thunder causes us to quake in our shoes and want to hide, perhaps we might perk up our ears and our courage and look for the loving presence of God in it. While everyone around us is fleeing to their tents, we might discover an invitation to enter a secret place, a holy place—a place that is most available to those that are broken and desperate, who have nothing left to lose. “In distress, you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder.” Thunder is a sign of something knitting back together. And in prayer, we may find that it is a place where God abides with us most intimately.
This is just a bit of what that startled meditation in the middle of a Psalm has been stirring in me. I have God’s invitation. We shall see where it leads.
