Skip to main content

Snow Days

Before the age of seventeen, I only remember having one snow day in south Alabama. Weather forecasters predicted a dusting to one inch of snow, which led to a shopping frenzy across the whole county. Woodsheds were emptied. Tractors were summoned. Milk and bread were secured, and dogs were allowed on the porch.

On the snow day we received a record two inches of snow! The entire county came to a sliding halt. School was cancelled, and my sister and I celebrated by building a ten inch snowman.

Since that time I have encountered ice storms in Florida, over two foot blizzards in Indiana with blowing snow, and mountain snow in Virginia. Every area has one thing in common – winter weather interrupts our normal plans in a magnificent way. Schools close. Churches close. Even malls close. Gatherings get cancelled. Rulers get tested. Neighbors meet over snow shovels and become amateur meteorologists. And everyone is acutely aware that we are not the ones who are in control of this world.

God gets our attention. We learn to worship at home again. We count our blessings. We become thankful that we made it home safely. We open our curtains to see the snow and notice the birds in the trees. We remember that God meets our needs, and He alone is sovereign over His world. We slow down long enough to hear from God. We dream again, and we hope that snow days don’t have to be made up.

Today, I still have almost ten inches of snow on the ground, and it’s snowing as I write. I had plans today. Now, I will wait and listen.

“Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21 (NIV)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why people don't go to church

As a pastor, one of the consuming questions with which I wrestle is “Why don’t people go to church?” In particular, the question is “Why don’t people come to my church?” If you doubt that people are opinionated, ask this question to a group of church people on a Wednesday night. I’ve studied church growth for several years, and I have a number of opinions about the matter myself. But, I wonder if we are asking the right question to the wrong people. Several researchers in the last few years have begun asking people who don’t attend church why they don’t attend church, and the answers are interesting. George Barna asked this question and provided the answers in his book, Grow Your Church from the Outside In . The top five reasons that people gave for not attending church comprise 83% of the reasons why people don’t come to church. 1. No time; schedule conflicts; working 26% 2. Not interested; nothing to offer; no reason 16% 3. Don’t know 15% 4. My beliefs are different than the church’s
3 comments
Read more

A Life Worth Living

We all have an idea of how we hope that our life would go. We all have dreams. We have dreams for our own lives and the lives of people who are close to us. We have goals that we would like to accomplish during our lifetime. We have a measure of what would constitute a complete life for us. When reality does not match our idealized life, we are disappointed and sad. We grieve the loss of a life that we had imagined both for ourselves and those who are close to us. We wonder where God is in all of these situations. The Bible tells us about a man with whom we can identify. Jacob’s life had taken several unexpected twists, yet he came to the end of his life content with God’s will. Jacob was ready to die, when his end was approaching. He was at peace with his life and all that God had done through him even though life had not turned out the way that he had planned. Finally, Jacob said to Joseph, “Now I am ready to die, since I have seen your face again and know you are still al
Post a Comment
Read more

Technical Difficulty

This blog has been inactive for a while due to some technical issues. It is good to be back and I have learned that my technical ability has declined in the last few years. It is amazing how quickly things change. I have been around computers for almost 30 years. My dad bought a commodore 64 in the early 80’s and bought an IMB clone pc later that decade. I spent part of my childhood playing Impossible Mission and Pac Man while typing the occasional paper. For those of you who did not grow up in the 80’s, yes, typing a paper was a big deal. I’m surprised that I didn’t get beat up more as a kid. I learned how to use pc’s before Windows 3.1 and remember when Word Perfect was better than Word – the WYSIWYG was way better on Word Perfect when printing to a dot matrix. While I was in college in the early 90’s I took computer programming and worked in the computer lab. During graduate studies I continued working in computer labs and began doing contract work for computer vendors
Post a Comment
Read more