The Thunderstorm on the Road to Stotternheim

On July 2, 1505, a twenty-one-year-old law student named Martin Luther was walking back to the University of Erfurt when the sky turned black. A violent thunderstorm broke over the Saxon countryside with such ferocity that Luther was thrown to the ground by a bolt of lightning striking nearby. The rain hammered the earth. The thunder rolled across the open fields like the voice of the Almighty Himself, and young Luther — face pressed into the mud, trembling — cried out, "Help me, Saint Anne! I will become a monk!"

Two weeks later, to the dismay of his father who had planned a profitable legal career for him, Luther walked through the doors of the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt and never looked back.

The psalmist writes that the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. It breaks the cedars, it shakes the wilderness, it strips the forests bare. And in His temple, all cry, "Glory!" Psalm 29 reminds us that God does not whisper when He means to redirect a life. Sometimes He speaks in thunder.

Luther could have dismissed that storm as mere weather. Instead, he heard in it the unmistakable summons of the Most High. The same voice that thunders over mighty waters still speaks today — not always in storms, but always with authority. The question is never whether God is speaking. The question is whether we are listening.