When the Thunder Spoke Over Lake Pontchartrain

On August 29, 2021, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana with 150-mile-per-hour winds. Marcus Thibodaux, a shrimper from Lafitte, had weathered dozens of storms in his fifty-three years on the bayou. But that night, huddled with his family in a concrete block church on higher ground, he heard something different. The wind peeled back roofing tin like paper. Cypress trees older than his grandfather snapped like matchsticks. The water surged fourteen feet, swallowing docks and boats whole.

"I've heard storms my whole life," Marcus told a reporter afterward. "But that night, I heard God."

The psalmist knew that sound. "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars," David wrote. "The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness." Psalm 29 isn't poetry written from a library — it's worship born from standing in the raw, terrifying presence of the Almighty. Every crack of thunder declares what comfortable living lets us forget: the Lord sits enthroned over the flood.

But here is the part that changes everything. The same psalm that describes trees shattering and deserts trembling ends with this: "The Lord gives strength to His people; the Lord blesses His people with peace."

The God whose voice commands the hurricane is the same God who walks you through it — and meets you with peace on the other side.