As Reliable As The Weather

Frustrating! I had just packed away a box of jumpers and jackets this weekend. A warm day and our afternoon visit to the seaside lulled me into a false sense of season and we were ready to bask in the warmth of an English springtime. And now, this morning, I’ve turned the heating back on, and my cup of tea has turned cold in a matter of seconds.

Do you remember the days, when we had four reliable Seasons – summer was warm, autumn damp, winter drab and cold – and spring – fresh and showery.

Of course there were some man-made variations – such as ‘smog’ – but on the whole, the climate was reliable and the weather was predictable to everybody - except the forecasters. The confidence we used to have in the climate, didn’t begin in our childhood – it goes back a long way.

700 years before Christ, Isaiah used the weather, to illustrate God's reliability ‘As rain and snow come down to water the earth and produce seed for the farmer;’ he said ‘so the word of God will always fulfil its purpose.’ It's an interesting way around! Not that the weather is as reliable as God – but that God is as reliable as the weather.

And a few decades after Isaiah, Jeremiah told his people: ‘God gives autumn and spring rains in season and assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’

But in recent years, the weather has changed. We have not needed scientists to tell us that the world is getting warmer – and much less predictable. So, the ability forecasters now have – to tell us almost to the minute when it is going to rain – and where – has proved invaluable to everybody, except perhaps the sports arenas who now use artificial turf or are played beneath their giant super-domes.

Our climate is now both unreliable and unpredictable - and the ‘rains in season and regular weeks of harvest’ that Jeremiah promised, have all but disappeared.

But, we can hardly blame God for the man-made gasses, chemicals and other pollutants, with which we are destroying the atmosphere above us – and it looks as though our ‘country gardens’ are going to change dramatically or even fade away.

At some point – very soon – we need to clean up our act – so that our children at least, can look forward once again, to a ‘reliable climate.’

Father in Heaven, You have blessed us with the all the wonders and joys of life. Help us to protect the gifts You have bestowed upon us. We have become greedyand careless. The seasons hold the story of life’s cycle. Teach us to become better stewards and protectors of Your gifts. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen

Viewing Freedom From Different Eyes

It is deeply saddening to see, again, such an increase in the attacks within Iraq. Just as the world slowly began to exhale, now we find insurgents releasing a torrent of bombings and shootings in recent days. If anyone expected the Iraqis to be happy just to be rid of their dictator, they must be feeling a little disappointed.

Amidst all the demonstrations against the continuing Allied occupation, there have even been expressions of nostalgia for the old regime. It reminds me of the Israelites complaining bitterly that Moses only led them out of slavery in Egypt so they could die of hunger in the desert.

Yesterday one newspaper reported a particularly shocking slogan, painted on the wreckage of an armoured vehicle: ‘Hell with Saddam is better’, it said, ‘than paradise with the Americans.’ Maybe it was meant ironically. Life before ‘liberation’ was hell for sure, but at least there was water and electricity, and some sort of civil order.

What kind of ‘paradise’ is anarchy and chaos? There is another interpretation. For many cultures, self-determination is a matter not of an individual being able to make their own choices, but of a people having the power to do so. We’re told that many Iraqis would rather their nation ran its own affairs, even if it meant suffering under a home-grown tyrant, than enjoy this right and that right on the say-so of a foreign power.

It’s an attitude we in the self-centred, personal-freedom-loving West perhaps find difficult to comprehend. Two world views may be clashing here: one which sees the welfare of their individual as paramount, and one which puts first the interests of the group.

And yet I wonder if their perspectives are so very different after all. Both alike see liberty in terms of some kind of autonomy. ‘We’d rather go to hell than be pushed around – even pushed into paradise – by someone else,’ says the graffiti in Iraq. It isn’t a million miles from the spirit that sometimes seems to prevail in the West, that insists on our right to do whatever we want, whatever the consequences.

The Iraqis are a proud people, the commentators say. And so are we all. We’d rather stand on our own two feet and be damned than be told what to do. Which side, I wondered, would the Bible come down on: the precious freedom of the individual, or the inalienable right of a community to decide its own destiny?

The answer, I think, is just as disturbing as that painted slogan. In the end, the Bible says, true happiness, true liberty doesn’t consist in any kind of self-determination, but in our recognition that we belong to God and our submission to His will, and His alone. Hell on our own terms, or paradise on God’s.

Why do we find it so difficult to decide?


Lord God, we live with the constant temptation to want power over the wills of others more than we want compassion in our own souls; May Your gentle touch on our souls, Your gentle words in our inner ears, Your gentle example to our spiritual sight, be the making of us, and of our community and nation and world. Amen