This has been a particularly nasty season for major storms in the southeastern United States, and throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Hurricane after hurricane has torn through the region, leaving dozens of people dead and thousands homeless.

Catastrophes like these remind us — in ways impossible to ignore — of our frailty and humanity. We may give hurricanes anthropomorphic names like Charley and Frances and Ivan and Jeanne, and we may have advanced technologically to the point where we can track hurricanes by satellite and anticipate their movements with some small degree of accuracy. But we remain utterly incapable of controlling these forces, much less stopping them.

Hurricanes — like the earthquakes more familiar in our part of the world — prove to us that no matter how intelligent or powerful we think we are, there are many things in God’s universe that are bigger than we are. For all our ability to bend elements of nature for our own benefit — we dam rivers, dynamite mountains, and build giant flying machines that appear to defy gravity — in reality, we have no command over nature at all.

Our awe of natural forces should, in turn, put us in awe of the One who does indeed marshal nature, and is its Creator. As imposing as the power of a hurricane may be, it pales in comparison with the power of the God who spoke the universe into existence.

On numerous occasions, God used His mastery of the elements to remind man of His supremacy. Think, for example, of the series of miraculous demonstrations the Lord wrought through Moses, to humble the Pharaoh of Egypt: rivers changed into blood; such pests as frogs, lice, flies, and locusts appeared from nowhere; hail pelted the earth; darkness enveloped the sky. In the beginning, Pharaoh’s minions duplicated a few of these feats, but soon it became apparent that their chicanery was no match for the true power of the Almighty.

When his confidence fell to a low ebb, Elijah the prophet received similar proof: “And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice” (1Kings 19:11-12). Elijah needed to be reminded that no matter how great the enemies against him appeared, the God who stood with him was more powerful than all, as Jesus Himself later showed when He stilled a storm with a word (Mark 4:35-41).

One might ask why a God who can control the elements with a thought would allow the kind of havoc wrought by a hurricane’s driving rains and violent winds. Consider that when God first made the world, it did not rain at all: “For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground” (Genesis 2:5-6). The Scripture first records the phenomenon of rain when God brought the flood in the days of Noah (Genesis 7:4).

Many things changed when man introduced sin, as God’s cursed the earth against him (Genesis 3:17-19). The world that had been flawless in God’s sight became a harsh, often inhospitable place to live — even animals, which in Eden had eaten only herbs (Genesis 1:29-30), would learn to eat flesh after the flood, even as God permitted man (Genesis 9:1-17).