Bob and Pat Moulder were listening to the rain pelt the roof of their Mississippi house early Sunday morning when the phone rang. It was their son, David, calling from South Korea. He was a helicopter pilot stationed along the demilitarized zone. As they talked, a booming clap of thunder shook the windows.
David asked, “What was that? It sounded like an explosion.”
“No, just thunder,” said his mother. “It’s been raining here all week.”
There was a long pause. “David, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here. I was thinking about what Mom said. ‘Just thunder.’ Other than the two of you, know what I miss the most? Thunder. We have rain, wind, snow and some violent storms, but it never thunders. I miss the thunder.”
When the Moulders got off the phone with their homesick son, Bob collected his old-fashioned tape recorder, a large golf umbrella and a lawn chair and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Pat asked.
“I’m going to record our son some thunder.”
“Bob, the neighbors will think you’re crazy.”
“David won’t,” he said, and went outside.
For the next 30 minutes Bob Moulder sat under his umbrella in the driving rain and flickering lightning. With the tape player rolling, he recorded what he later described as “half an hour of the finest Mississippi thunder a lonesome man could ever want to hear.” The next day he mailed the tape to David with a single note: “A special gift.”
In Psalm 29, we see another David who was fond of thunder. He was fond of it because it reminded him of the awesome power of God—power God used on David’s behalf.
Charles Spurgeon said that thunder is “the church bell of the universe ringing kings and angels, and all the sons of earth to their devotions.”
Meditate a moment on a thunderstorm, and like David you will say, “For my need there’s more power available from God that can be found in a hurricane!” This Sunday at 10 we’ll let Psalm 29 remind us of the wonder of thunder. Join us!
--Tom
Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.