It’s 84 degrees. My face and my noggin are sunburned. And it’s October as I write. I live not only in the northern state of Indiana, but in the northern portion of the state. Which pushes me, as a lover of fall and cold to wonder, “What gives?” I’ve been waiting since the beginning of June for the cold weather to come, counting down the days. My frustration in turn leads to me wonder if perhaps I’m the problem.
No, I don’t mean I should learn to love the heat. All you believers who love the heat will be healed of that malady when you are glorified. I mean I may well be misunderstanding the weather. When God makes covenant with Noah in Gen. 8:22 He makes a promise upon which not only all science but even all inductive reasoning is built upon. He said,
“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And day and night
Shall not cease.”
This is God’s promise of order, predictability, that to some degree we can count on the future being like the past. It is the reason I don’t expect it to be so hot in October. Truth be told, soon enough I won’t be hot. (Tomorrow is the day. I’m so excited.) We’re not going to jump right into Summer next week. Two cheers for predictability says I.
Not, however, three cheers. God’s promise of order is not a promise to let go of the reins of the future. It is not as if He vowed to be a tame lion. Whether it is the foolish enlightenment notion that the world is itself just a clock slowly unwinding through the inexorable march of impersonal forces or the confused notion that God wrote the story, set up the dominoes, bumped the first and now watches from a distance, we are prone to missing His nearness, His active works of providence. We forget that He is not only there and not silent but He is here and not passive.
We won’t plant next year’s garden in February, though God could make such the perfect time. I won’t either fear that the universe is broken if February is warm. The same God who told Job that He alone shut in the sea with doors is the God who sends tsunamis. The one who promised never again to flood the earth has chosen to flood everything from the Mississippi River to the city of Johnstown, PA, twice.
In short, we should not be surprised when we find ourselves surprised from time to time. We should not, in receiving the blessing of predictability, curse ourselves by forgetting that He is near. The laws of nature do not belong to nature nor are they, properly speaking, laws. They are instead the patterns by which God usually operates. What He never does is leave the stage He has built for the sake of making manifest His glory. Which means, rain or shine, hot or cold, summer and winter, springtime and harvest we praise Him.
Some places have four seasons. Here brother, we only have two seasons, sort of. There is very hot, with not as much rain, and warm/hot with more rain. We can plant crops all year round and they will grow. We have predictability, cool, warm, hot every day, and sometimes in the same day, and not always in that order.
I do, at times miss the cold and snow, the four seasons. But I don’t miss having to put on a heavy warm coat before I go outside for half of the year. The only thing we need to check for, when we go outside, do we need to take an umbrella.
There are blessings everywhere. I’m grateful for the ones here.