Confessions of a Weather Junkie

The other night I was at my son’s baseball practice. My focus, however, was not on his play but on my phone. A thunderstorm was approaching, and I kept checking the radar. For some reason metal bats and lightning don’t mix well.

OK. I admit it. I am a weather junkie of sorts. I love big storms. I love lots of snow. I love to see God’s power on display.

I’m envious of the experience of John Muir, the famous explorer environmentalist, when he was in a windstorm. He found some Douglas spruce whose “brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy.” He climbed one hundred feet to the top of the tree so that he could experience the wind. Later he wrote, “never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion.”

As much as I love all the modern technology that allows us to follow weather more closely, I notice there is a downside to it as well. Often, the anticipation of a storm can create more anxiety in us. Many times I have heard people tell me that they need to leave for home early because they are afraid of the coming storm.

It is good to prepare for things in life. We should think ahead and make our plans. We need to be careful, though. The storm might never come. We have to live in the present. We shouldn’t live in fear of what could be. We don’t know what God will do. After all, He can calm the wind and the waves.

God can turn any anticipated hard conversation into a good one. God can provide funds from places we never expected.

The approaching storm, which I was afraid of at baseball practice, never came. All that anxiety mounted to nothing. God chose to shield us from the storm.

The lesson God taught me that day was simple. No matter what I think might be coming, I always need to remember God’s words, “Be still and know that I am God.”