I suppose I am well-entrenched in that class of people who talk about the weather but don’t do anything about it. As Don Riley used to remind me from time to time, one of Clint Eastwood’s characters observed, “A man has got to know his limitations.” Therefore, I make very little pretense of being able to do much about the weather. But I have been known to solicit the intervention of The One Who Can.

Weather is sort of a tricky area, theologically speaking. Which would make Kansas sort of a devil’s rectangle. “If you think God really cares about us, then explain Kansas weather!”

Yesterday, we had a high of sixty-five under partly cloudy skies. This morning the wind chill is at twelve degrees and my car is glazed with ice and sleet. There’s a good chance today that some good decent Kansas folks are going to end up in a ditch or in a hospital. Possibly in a morgue. Somewhere else, maybe a couple hundred miles away, other good decent folks will be talking about what a nice day it is.

So far as I can tell, such is the nature of life on this planet.

Long before we’d polluted virtually every aspect of our environment, developed chemical compounds that have no known means of natural dissolution, and invented myriad ways of killing others and ourselves, weather created havoc. Rather than easing up on that account, it appears that the extremes are becoming even more extreme. Even some members of the Flat Earth Society acknowledge the shrinking of the polar caps, albeit without apprehension. “This planet has survived Ice Ages before; it can survive whatever it is that you idiots think is happening now. You think carbon footprint is bad now, ever heard of the Industrial Revolution when coal smoke obscured entire cities and moths molted into new species?”

And so, along with whatever else will always be with us, we have hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, polar vortexes and other pestilence. Maybe the earth will go out with a whimper, maybe with a bang, maybe in a flash of nuclear-induced vapor. Given the nature of our species and the nature of our planet, there are a number of possibilities.

In the meanwhile, use good sense when deciding whether or not to drive and especially great caution when erring on the chancy side of that decision. Remember that even a really good job is not always worth risking your life. Keep paying those insurance premiums. And, if you haven’t already, quit blaming God and other folks for the results of your own choices and decisions.

And always, always, always: keep praying to the One who spares us from many things, sustains us through the others, and tries to give us wisdom to know the difference between risky and just plain stupid. Even though we need to know our limitations, we don’t have to put them on public display.

H. Arnett
2/15/19