Lift Up Your Voices

Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
Job 38:34–35
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Lift Up Your Voices
We are told throughout Scripture to lift up our voices to the Lord. In times of distress and pain, as well as in times of joy and thanksgiving we are to sing to the Lord (James 5:13). Yet here in these verses God confronts Job about his ability to lift up his voice. In a deflating way, Job is faced with the reality that we don’t control God’s creation. We are not the ones to command nature. We might be able to predict the rain, but we can’t produce it.  As God begins to come to the end of His questioning, we, like Job, are met with the realization that we are not God and dare not demand parity with Him. Instead, we do as He has commanded, we lift up our voices in repentance knowing that they will be heard.  And receiving forgiveness we again lift up our voices in praise and adoration for all that He has done for us. We lift up our voices in thanksgiving for His Son who came to reconcile us to Him. We lift up our voices in awe as we receive forgiveness, life, and salvation, through the simple means of water and Word, bread and wine.  And with Jude, we can proclaim, “To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” (Jude 25).