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“Winter Weather Warning”
I've been sitting in my den listening to the wind howling outside my window. The temperature has hit the freezing point for the first time this autumn. And the reports of snow in the western mountains of North Carolina are stirring up my love for the changing seasons. We are barely midway through October and there's already frost upon our pumpkins and we are reaching for our winter wear. Yesterday my beloved was shivering on the church pew. I pointed out to her that fair warning had been given. Right there on top of the front page of the worship bulletin at the beginning of the liturgy were the words: “We Enter to Worship.” “Winter to Worship,” be prepared! Oh well, even winter wit needs a little time to get up to speed.
One thing we know is that weather watchers don't take long to gear up at this time of year. Television weather reporters morph into extraordinary creatures at times like this. It's wonderful to watch people who truly love their work. Soon we will watch as television news programs will skip from town to town getting live dispatches from weather reporters on location. They will breathlessly inform viewers that nothing is happening yet. A winter weather warning is like the super bowl for local meteorologists. But I understand their exuberance; I love my work too and sometimes overflow with enthusiasm.
The onset of wintry weather has set me to thinking about temperatures in the Bible. There's not much in the Bible about cold temperatures. Truth is there's not much there about heat either. Of course, there are some comments about the fires of Hades, but the reports about that are not delivered with anything like the energy of the typical television report about "snow in the higher elevations."
Then there is the story about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. That's not a story about the weather but it certainly is about hot temperatures. It gets several lines of copy in the Bible but not a lot. You remember the basic details. It happened in Babylon--what we now call Iraq. Old king "Saddam Hussein" Nebuchadnezzar built a golden image and commanded everyone in his kingdom to bow down and worship it. Those who refused were sentenced to being burned up in a fiery furnace. Those three men, being loyal followers of Almighty God, refused to worship the idol and were tossed into the flames.
It was surely hot enough. The soldiers accompanying them were burned up but the three rebels were not harmed. Furthermore, when the king looked into the furnace he saw a fourth person in the fire--an angel of the Lord. Now, as I say, this remarkable story gets a brief mention in the Bible but nothing like our weather report gets when there is snow and ice in the forecast. Maybe heat is just not as exciting to us as cold is. If that's the case, it may just be unfortunate that the Bible happened in a region that doesn't get much winter weather.
Think, for instance, what would have happened if some Bible event had occurred right here in North Carolina in the good old U.S.A. when we were facing a winter storm warning. I don't know what the story line would have been except it would have had something to do with trusting God and doing the right thing. But if it had a connection with bad weather, our television weather reporters would have gone nuts! No television preacher would have been able to compete with the earnestness of the priests of the weather charts and radar images. The Weather Channel would have become the most popular spot on the dial. And everybody would have soon been talking about the Lord. The write-up in the Bible would have gotten an entire book instead of a few paragraphs. I don't know how it would have affected the price of bread and milk.
I noticed the changes at church on Sunday. We're switching over from air conditioning to heat. Also our normal Sunday morning hugs are more prolonged, energetic and warming. We are preparing for All Saints Day. Advent and Christmas are beginning to enter our expectations. And we are already into our Thanksgiving planning. Ah, it's a refreshing time of year!
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