When the Mountain Shook and the World Went Quiet

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with the force of five hundred atomic bombs. The blast flattened 230 square miles of forest in minutes. Trees that had stood for centuries lay down like matchsticks. Entire ridgelines simply vanished. Harry Truman, the old lodge owner who had refused to evacuate, insisting the mountain would never touch him, was buried under 150 feet of volcanic debris. He had staked his confidence on the permanence of what he could see.

In the months that followed, scientists expected a wasteland for decades. Instead, wildflowers pushed through the ash. Elk returned. Lakes formed where none had existed. The devastation became a laboratory for new life that no one had predicted.

The psalmist knew something about mountains that melt. "The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth." Psalm 97 is not a gentle hymn. It is a declaration that the Almighty reigns with such absolute authority that the most immovable things we know — stone, ridgeline, peak — become soft as candle wax in His presence. The heavens themselves proclaim His righteousness, and every nation witnesses His glory.

We build our confidence on things that feel permanent — careers, health, institutions. But the Most High sits enthroned above all of it. And here is the breathtaking paradox: the same sovereign power that levels mountains is the very power that brings wildflowers from ashes. He is exalted far above all the earth, and His reign makes all things new.