The mountains quake, the waters roar

You’ve seen the horrendous footage from Nepal and Tibet. People running for their lives. Tiny little figures down on the valley floor. And the camera pans to an awful, cataclysmic stampede of water hurtling down the valley towards them. Sweeping everything in its path—roads, bridges, heavy-duty machinery, and people—to oblivion.

The footage reminded me of a line in Psalm 46:

“…though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.”

It’s utterly heart-rending stuff. You hear the cries of family or friends, you see people racing—but you know it will not be enough.

Debris-laden waters raced, reaching a maximum speed of 71kph, averaging out at around 30kph. Footage shows entire buildings swept along on a rampaging current of mud. The force is staggering—calculations show that the impact of the falling chunk of glacier on the valley floor was 10 times that of the force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

And the waters surged. And the tiny figures ran. And they could not outrun them.

Families shattered, communities obliterated, villages erased as if they had never been there. In a moment we were reminded of the smallness of man.

But the footage held a second, sterner echo—something apocalyptic. The sheer irresistible force of the flood calls to mind imagery the Bible uses to describe God’s judgment at the end of time. It will be like a flood which sweeps men away (Ps 90), and “waves roar like many waters… for a destroyer has come upon her” (Jer 51).

What a solemn and awful thing it is to see the footage. How much more solemn and awful will be the judgment God brings on the world. It will be terrible in its force—like the roar of many waters. For all the great boasts of mankind, no one will outrun God’s judgment, no one will escape it, no technology will save us when it comes. As you see the footage, remember the coming judgment.

Yet even as I looked at the terrifying waters, I was reminded of something else, or rather someone else. Imagine someone runningin the footage, not away, but down into the valley. And they place themselves in the way of the flood waters. Somehow as he does so, all the force, energy and power of the surging billows is quieted. This is no super-hero figure who turns and strides away from his exploits. As you look you see his battered and broken body lying face down amidst the shattered debris. And you realise he gave himself that others might live. To run away is instinct, to run towards is love.

As the roaring waters give a glimpse of the holy judgment of God, so we can get a glimpse of how astonishing God’s rescue offer in Jesus is. Jesus is saying, “I will face the terrifying flood of God’s judgment so that you don’t have to.”

That’s why the verse before the lines from Psalm 46 at the top says, “God is our refuge… Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way…”

There is no one else who can or will stop the floodwaters. Jesus Christ is the only one. If he is our refuge, we will have nothing to fear when the flood of judgment comes. If not…