I. "Fulfilling His word." Somehow or other, then, His word is fulfilled in the devastation and disfigurement of that which His own hands have made; and the agent which inflicts it obeys some law as regular as that which governs the motion of a planet, although with more complex conditions. In the view of Him who sees all that has been, that is, that will be, there is beyond the immediate present the illimitable future; and in some way this present ruin most assuredly is preparing for that future. And, still more, behind the seen and the visible world there is the world invisible and moral; and, in ways which we do not suspect as yet, its high requirements may be, must be, thus provided for.
II. As we pass from the physical and inanimate world and enter the human, the spiritual, and the moral, the storm and wind become metaphorical expressions, having, however, real counterparts in the passions and the agency of man. Here, too, as elsewhere, we watch them fulfilling God's word. (1) The State is exposed to the storm of invasion and the storm of revolution. (2) The Church is exposed to the storm of persecution and of controversy. (3) The individual life is assailed by outward troubles and by inward storms of difficulty and doubt as to religious truth. Loyalty to known truth is the warrant of endurance among all the trials that may await us, that endurance which transforms the very fiercest blast into tender fulfilment of God's word of promise to those who are the special objects of His love.
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 25.
Reference: Psalms 148:11-13. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 261.