Sometimes it’s easy for me to read over a shocking statement about God and not let it hit me like it ought. Take, for example, Psalm 135:7 - “He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.”

Now, the verse says that God makes lightnings for the rain. That’s easy enough to picture. Dark, rolling thunderheads crackling with veins of fire. But then I remember that lightning can cause terrific damage, even take a person’s life.

On August 21, 1776, a nighttime storm raged over the city of New York for three hours, accompanied by intense lightning. David McCullough relates the carnage:

“Houses burst into flame. Ten soldiers camped by the East River, below Fort Stirling, were killed in a single flash. In New York, a soldier hurrying through the streets was struck deaf, blind, and mute. In another part of town three officers were killed by a single thunderbolt. A later report described how the tips of their swords and coins in their pockets had been melted, their bodies turned as black as if roasted” (1776, pg. 156).

This means that if God makes lightnings for the rain, then he is also behind the life-taking effects of those bolts. “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39).

God roasts people. May that cause us to tremble. And then, may it drive us to ponder the sizzling rage Jesus endured in our place on the cross.