“It won’t take much more to get me hot under the collar,” I told Ed, my old neighbour, back in Saskatchewan, when he called yesterday. “The weather has been so hot here that our dog would melt if we had one,” I said.
My old neighbour said without compassion, “Better you folks fry eggs on the sidewalk than us.”
“We don’t need to,” I told him, “the hens are laying them fried. We have been forced into a close relationship with our air conditioners these days.”
Ed had a better method for us to stay cool than by using expensive air conditioners. He suggested that we live in the heat with the thirty and two processes. Keep the air conditioners off, and instead, every thirty minutes take a cold shower for precisely two minutes. I did not want to explore his suggestion further, so I said that I would consider his solution if the heat wave lasts for weeks. Still eager to be helpful, Ed suggested that we put on the weather channel because somewhere in Canada there would be hotter weather than ours, and we would feel better about our heat.
It seems everyone has their own opinion about the weather. John Ruskin said: “Sunshine is delicious. Rain is refreshing. Wind braces us up. Snow is exhilarating. There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
The weather is one of those situations in life where we may have little control over it if it doesn’t suit us. We can dress warmly in the cold, or go for a swim on a hot day, but our control over the weather is limited. It is hard for us to understand that our weather is far more complicated and far more prevailing than our personal comfort level. Do we keep busy trying to control every aspect of our lives, even the weather? Do we believe that God can control our lives better than we can?
In the twelfth chapter of Luke, Jesus cautions us to keep God in our daily thinking and planning. We fear those who could kill us, but it is more than being killed. We need to fear God for it is God who can send us to hell. We may hide from other people, what we really think about them. Yet, God knows what we really think. God knows everything about us even to the real numbers of the hairs on our head. Jesus warns us about hypocrisy. We try to acknowledge and disown Jesus according to the various situations in our lives. We cannot even control our tongue for out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. Our heart and life will be lost unless it is set on God.
We get focused on food, and what we will wear and have. We worry about having enough and more than enough. So often we forget what is essential like a cold glass of water on a scorching day. Life is about the treasure that is ours through our faith in God. God knows we need His mercy, His unconditional love, and His forgiveness through our faith in Christ. May our lives rest on these as our treasures here on earth.
