The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars,

Yes, the LORD splinters the cedars of Lebanon.

Psalm 29:5

Psalm 29 is a meditation on the power of God. I imagine David seated on a promontory somewhere near the coast of the Mediterranean. It’s a stormy day. Rain is falling, lightning flashing, thunder clapping. The ocean swirls, the wilderness shakes. In the nearness of God Almighty David can hear the angelic hosts, the mighty ones in Heaven above. In His Temple, every one of them is looking down, looking on, crying, “Glory!”

This Psalm is not for nothing. David wants us to know that every man has a date with God’s power. One day or another, one way or another, He will take us in hand–and it is a mighty, omnipotent hand. Are we ready for that day?

To pose the question as David might, are we cedars of Lebanon? Are we tall, stout, unbending, unyielding in the mighty Wind of God’s Spirit? God would not have it so. Better that we should be stalks of wheat: supple, flexible, yielding quickly to the prarie wind, so that He might make of us a beautiful, moving, living mosaic upon the fields of this world. Better that the wind should bow our bodies and our heads, than that it should break us like cedars and render us into splinters.

Observing God’s power in the storm, David suddenly sees it everywhere, in all things great and small. For the voice of the sovereign LORD not only thunders and shakes, but also secretly and quietly falls upon the doe, causing her to give birth. Here is hope: hope for the cedars of Lebanon, hope for the puffed up and stiff-necked sons of men.

For this is a God who is as gentle as He is powerful. This is a God who can not only break and shatter, but who can transform and recreate. Indeed, this is a God who can turn a cedar of Lebanon into a stalk of wheat, or into a graceful deer who leaps upon her high places.

If we would know this God, if we too would be mighty in His hand, let us come to Him each morning. Let us ask to hear His mighty voice, so that the stiff, unyielding cedar within is broken and shattered once again, and our spirit renewed as a mighty stalk of wheat.

It is said that in winds of sufficient velocity, a stalk of wheat can penetrate a window or a wall–and break neither. “The Lord will give strength to His people.” He will make them into wheat, and the wheat into arrows, and the arrows into mighty weapons for the pulling down of strongholds.

And when He does it, every one in His temple will cry, “Glory.”