Talking about the Weather

Florida friend Larry recently wrote me as follows "One of the odder things I heard this summer is that the reason it is getting cooler this summer is because of global warming. Only someone who believe that Al Gore has their best interests at heart would believe global cooling is caused by global warming" to which I replied as follows:

"One constant throughout my life has been that no matter what happens, with the weather, or really with anything at all, a large group of would-be nannies is right there to claim it was caused by some bad behavior by folks like me, that can only be fixed by handing all the levers of power to them and their friends so they can take better care of us than we are obviously capable of on our own.

Having already lived in a condo, the one thing I know for sure is that I do not want to give such people any power at all."

With Hurricane Gustav headed for the U.S. coast tonight, one of the best suggestions I've heard for how the Republican party should respond at their convention is by showing America what individual Americans themselves can do to help out in a disaster, rather than sitting around talking about how someone else (in the government) should do something.

One of the worst comments is Michael Moore's "I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven..." Another was the similar earlier suggestion by Stuart Shephard that viewers of a weekly video pray for rain during Barack Obama's acceptance speech for the Democratic party presidential nomination.

I learned long ago not to pray about weather. In my first day on the job after seminary, the congregation had just endured a huge flood, and asked me to pray for rain to stop. I did, and it did - for so long that folks feared for their crops and asked me to pray for rain. I did, and floods immediately returned. At that point, I was sure of only one thing - I was done praying about weather!

It isn't that God can't rain on Republican convention plans. It's rather that even asking for such a thing is as Barack Obama might say "way above my pay grade." Only God knows the full implications of weather, and His comment on the topic was that He "sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (MT 5:45)"