The Thunderstorm on the Road to Erfurt

On July 2, 1505, a twenty-one-year-old law student named Martin Luther was walking back to the University of Erfurt when a violent thunderstorm overtook him near the village of Stotternheim. Lightning struck so close that it threw him to the ground. Terrified, face-down in the mud, Luther cried out, "Help me, Saint Anna! I will become a monk!"

His friends thought it was panic talking. His father was furious — he had invested everything in his son's legal career. But Luther kept his vow. Two weeks later, he entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, and the trajectory of Western Christianity shifted forever.

The psalmist writes that the voice of the Lord is powerful, that it breaks the cedars, shakes the wilderness, and strips the forests bare. Luther discovered this firsthand on a muddy road in Saxony. The Almighty did not speak to him in a library or a lecture hall. He spoke in thunder and lightning, in a storm so fierce it knocked a young man flat and rearranged the priorities of his entire life.

What Luther learned that day — what Psalm 29 has been telling us for three thousand years — is that the voice of God is not a suggestion. It is a force that breaks what needs breaking and rebuilds what needs rebuilding. And when that voice finally speaks your name, the only fitting response is the one the psalm gives us: "Glory!"