The Sound Heard Round the World

On August 27, 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa erupted with a force that stunned the entire planet. The explosion was heard nearly three thousand miles away in Rodrigues Island. Ash darkened the skies over Southeast Asia for days. Tsunamis swept across the Indian Ocean. The mountain did not merely shake — it collapsed into the sea, two-thirds of the island simply gone. For months afterward, vivid red sunsets blazed across Europe and the Americas as volcanic dust circled the globe. Scientists later calculated the blast released energy equivalent to ten thousand atomic bombs.

The world's most powerful nations had no response. No navy could hold back the waves. No army could reassemble the shattered rock. Every human empire, for all its cannons and warships, stood mute before a single geological event.

The psalmist understood something those Victorian scientists were only beginning to grasp. "The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth." If one volcanic island could humble every nation on the planet, how much greater is the One who laid the foundations of the earth itself? Psalm 97 reminds us that the Almighty reigns from a throne built on righteousness and justice — surrounded by clouds and thick darkness not because He is hidden, but because His glory is too immense for mortal eyes. He is the Most High over all the earth, exalted far above every power we have ever known or feared.