COP30 - 11 November 2025
God speaks in Creation

Reflection

There are many passages in the Bible where creation attests to the glory of its creator God, but as far as we can work out (and we'd be happy to be corrected) Psalm 29 is the only passage where God's voice is heard speaking directly in or as part of  creation, unless you count Balaam's donkey in Numbers 22:28!

At the start of the psalm it's the heavenly creatures that are called to attention, not us. We hear David's interaction with them and, although we have no idea who they are or what they look like, we have at least one thing in common with them: we were all created by God. Perhaps we can assume that, as heavenly creatures, they have a first hand experience of God that eludes us here on earth. If so, we should be impressed that their attention is about to be directed to earth, on a journey, the purpose of which, is to display God's glory, his magnificence and his power.

They, and we, are taken first to the `great waters`, probably the Mediterranean Sea, the largest expanse of water in the lives of most of David's contemporaries, deeper than anything else they knew and with no visible end to it.  Their Canaanite neighbours believed it to be the battleground between Yam, the god of the sea and of chaos, and Baal, the god of fertility and thunderstorms 1. Fine to work and play around the edge of it, but you wouldn't choose to set sail across it unless you had to, and to be caught in a thunderstorm on it would be truly frightening.  So why does David take us there? And why in a storm?

We're there so that we can see that God is greater than the darkest of places. His voice echoes in these places, his spirit hovers over their surface,  just as his presence hovered over the waters before creation. The thunder we hear is his voice.

And then we are in a forest of cedar trees, of which there were many in Old Testament times, but very few now. The trees surrounding us are massive, many of them approaching 36m (120 ft) in height 2, with enormous girths. They're the biggest trees we've ever seen and there are hundreds of them. Then God speaks, and we run to safety as these giants shatter around us.

God's voice is synonymous with his power. Five more times on our journey we hear it. It causes mountains to move, it causes fire and earthquakes, it causes forests to be stripped bare. We are left with no doubt that just as God created with his voice, he can destroy with his voice, and yet we have not been overcome. Why is that? 

We have seen God's glory, his magnificence and his power, and there is no other possible response than to declare '’Glory!” And that would have been a good place to end the Psalm, but David has one more thing to add and it's a little unexpected given everything that we've seen on our journey. He addresses God directly, with a request on behalf of all his people. He asks God, who is stronger than everything and everybody, for strength, and he asks him for peace, and in doing so he reminds us that this God, who can create and destroy just by speaking, is our Father who loves us.

Response

Reading Psalm 29 in 2025,  we can see metaphor oozing from it. Because we're familiar with the scientific explanation for thunder, and because we know the damage lightning can cause, and we understand what causes earthquakes, we read the Psalm as a poem. We tell ourselves that God doesn't really speak in creation like this... or does he?

If we put our 21st century sophisticated thinking to one side for a moment, there is much that this psalm can teach us about having a voice. God's voice is powerful because he is God,  but what about our voices? Spend some time today considering how powerful your voice might be purely because he is your God.

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