The Sound That Circled the Globe

On August 27, 1883, the island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait erupted with a force the modern world had never witnessed. The explosion was heard clearly on Rodrigues Island, nearly three thousand miles away. Ship captains' eardrums ruptured forty miles from the blast. The pressure wave circled the entire globe three and a half times. Forests were stripped bare. Tsunamis swallowed coastal villages whole. For months afterward, sunsets burned crimson across Europe from volcanic ash suspended in the upper atmosphere.

Scientists would later calculate the eruption's force at roughly thirteen thousand times the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. It remains the loudest sound in recorded human history.

The psalmist David had no knowledge of Krakatoa, but he knew something about an unstoppable voice. Seven times in Psalm 29, he declares "the voice of the LORD" — thundering over waters, snapping the ancient cedars of Lebanon like matchsticks, shaking the wilderness of Kadesh, stripping forests bare. Every creature in His temple cries, "Glory!"

And yet here is what stuns: this same voice, more powerful than any volcanic eruption, older than any mountain, speaks not only in devastation but in blessing. "The LORD gives strength to his people," David writes. "The LORD blesses his people with peace."

The Almighty who commands the storm is the same God who commands your stillness.