A God of Wonders

"But as for me, I would seek God,

And I would place my cause before God;

Who does great and unsearchable things,

Wonders without number.

He gives rain on the earth,

And sends water on the fields.

Job 5:8-10

In his book, "Taste and See: Savoring the Supremacy of God in all of Life," John Piper drew my attention to something I had missed in my previous readings of this verse in Job. Eliphaz, the writer of this passage, lifts up God, describing Him as one who does great and unsearchable things..."wonders without number." Do you consider it odd that his first example is something that we all not only all experience often, but also frequently complain about? ... rain? Did you ever think of rain as a great and unsearchable wonder? I try to be grateful for the rain, having lived through times of drought, and come to realize it as a gift of God, but I never thought of rain as "a wonder." John Piper shared some facts about rain that have totally changed my understanding of this "wonder" of the LORD's creation. For Job and his friends to have experienced this wonder, water would have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea several hundred miles away and then poured out on fields from the sky. How does this happen? It would not just be for the uneducated mind to wonder at this phenomena. The more one knows about the process, the more amazing it truly is! John Piper says, "...if one inch of rain falls on one square mile of farmland during the night, that would be 2,323,200 cubic feet of water, which is 17,377,536 gallons, which is 144,735,360 pounds of water." That is just the amount of water on one square mile!! I learned about evaporation and condensation in school, but I never really think about how incredible this process truly is. How does it work? John Piper described the process, "water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust particles between .00001 and .0001 centimeters wide...the salt is taken out. So the sky picks up millions of pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, carries the water for three hundred miles, and then dumps it (now turned into water) on the farm. If it just dumped millions of pounds of water on the farm, the wheat would be crushed. So the sky dribbles the millions of pounds of water down in little drops. And they have to be big enough to fall for one mile or so from the sky without evaporating, and small enough to keep from crushing the wheat stalks." It does this through coalescence, which means that "specks of water start bumping into each other and join up and get bigger, and when they are big enough, they fall." It really is one of God's wonders, isn't it? Our God truly does all things well!!