Florida weather reports in February are normally mundane. If I were a weatherman, I would record one on February 1, then replay it for the rest of the month. “Today will be sunny and warm with a high temperature of seventy-five degrees. Now back to Ben at the sports desk.” At this time of year, the weather is something we Floridians don’t talk about unless it’s to brag about it to our frozen friends up north.
This year is different. For the past two weeks, I have awoken to freezing temperatures, sometimes down into the twenties. Our plants are being killed by frost, pipes are bursting, and confused birds are rechecking migration maps. Suddenly, the weather is the hot (or is it cold) topic. What is happening?
When Job complained that God was unfair and hadn’t taken proper care of the Job family, God began to pepper him with questions about what he could and couldn’t do. The weather was one of His topics.
“Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man.
to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground sprout with grass?”
(Job 38:25-27)
The obvious answer was that God had done these things and not Job. This weird weather reminds me again that I am living in God’s world. Here is a paraphrase of James 4:13-15 I wrote just for today:
Come now, you who say,
“Today or tomorrow we will go to the beach and lie out in the sun,”
Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall enjoy some warm weather.”