Hurricane Michael: Is God Delivering a Message?

Hurricane Michael is rapidly gaining strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico as Floridians prepare for what could be the panhandle’s strongest landfall in 100 years.^[1] Authorities are pleading with residents to follow the evacuation order as they prepare for an ocean surge that could inundate more than 325 miles of coastline, flooding roads, homes, and businesses under as much as 13 feet of water.^[2] Hurricane expert at the Weather Channel Rick Knabb tweeted, “#Michael will make new history for central Panhandle, Big Bend. Some of you could get water and wind worse than ever before.”^[3] And Weather Underground’s meteorologist Bob Henson warned, “This is the real deal. Hurricanes that intensify overnight just before reaching land are the worst nightmare of forecasters and emergency managers.”^[4]

Few things make us feel more powerless than natural disasters. Faced with the fury of “Mother Nature,” we are reminded of how little control we truly have over our own lives. But rather than become circumspect, we quickly become distracted. Whether these distractions are rooted in the busyness of life, amusements, environmental activism, or relief efforts, the end result remains the same: We fail to receive what may be a message from God delivered in such a way as to make it unavoidable. Far from being a display of Mother Nature’s power, natural disasters might be viewed as God’s postal service. Sometimes they serve as a delivery mechanism for God’s message to us.

In Amos 4:6–10, God reveals how He used famine, drought, blight, and pestilence to alert the Israelites to the danger they were in due to their rebellion against God. His intent was not to punish sin but to draw the people back to Himself. Nevertheless, Amos repeatedly laments, “yet you did not return to me, declares the LORD.” Could it be that, like Israel, we are dismissing God’s efforts to arouse us from our spiritual slumber as being nothing more than inevitable forces of nature, as is implied by the term “natural disaster”?

Like Israel, America is experiencing trouble in the areas of:

• Water –In 2017 Texas and Florida were inundated with flood waters from record-breaking hurricanes,^[5][6] while 10 western states suffered from 62 active forest fires, due in part to a lack of water.^[7] These drought conditions stretched into this year with 38.4% of the nation experiencing drought conditions in February of 2018.^[8] Certainly America has been experiencing its own version of Amos 4:7–8 where God says that He sent rain to one city and drought to another in an effort to provoke the Israelites to question why.
• Lack of Food – Today 41 million Americans struggle with hunger,^[9] and one in six American children may not know where they will get their next meal.^[10] Surprisingly, these children are not where we may expect to find them. According to National Geographic, “Today hunger in the suburbs is growing faster than in cities, having more than doubled since 2007.”^[11]
• Poor Harvests – Over the course of 10 months in 2017, America experienced 16 separate billion-dollar weather and climate-related disasters, costing American agriculture more than $5 billion dollars in lost crops.^[12] These wreaked havoc across the nation, affecting beef cattle ranches in Texas, cotton and rice farms in Louisiana, orange groves in Florida, and vineyards in California.^[13]
• Infestation – The Emerald Ash Borer is spreading at an uncontrollable rate, killing millions of Ash trees across the country and increasing the risk of forest fires where such are usually rare. This invasive insect has been heralded by researchers as the most serious threat to forests ever seen in the U.S.^[14] And rat populations are exploding to record levels in cities across the nation.^[15] In California, Roof Rats are migrating from the cities to rural areas where they are destroying fruit and nut crops.^[16]
• Disease – Untreatable sexually transmitted diseases^[17] and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are spreading across America.^[18] Our water infrastructure is stressed, producing an increase in waterborne diseases.^[19] And today, one out of every three Americans are likely to develop cancer within their lifetime.^[20]

At what point will we pause long enough to contemplate whether God is using nature to deliver a message to our nation: Repent before it is too late? Almost certainly, the Israelites dismissed their plight as forces of nature beyond their control. Consequently, God declared, “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel! For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name!” (Amos 4:12–13)

Frightening as an encounter with the unbridled forces of nature may be, it is far less terrifying than a reckoning with He who controls the forces of nature. As such, God sometimes uses our helplessness in the face of His creation to remind us that we are not truly in control and that we are in great peril if we remain in rebellion to Him who is in control. Given the parallels between our nation and Israel’s experience, we ought to consider the possibility that God is using nature to deliver a message to our nation. While we still have time, let us ask what it is that God may be saying to us through these disasters.