March 3, 2003
DOWN HOME:
Sleet iced over plans for week
___So much for global warming. Last week felt more like the next Ice Age.
___You know the old joke: If you don't like the weather in Texas, just wait five minutes. It'll change.
___That pretty well described the meteorological shift across the Lone Star State. (By the way, why is the word "meteorological" instead of "weather"? We got pulverized by sleet and freezing rain, not meteorites.)
___If you remember, we had a beautiful weekend before You-Know-Where froze over. We enjoyed bountiful sunshine and warm temperatures. It was the kind of weekend when folks wash their cars and start thinking about what they're going to do with t
heir flower beds and gardens.
___Like prophets of doom, the weather forecasters started talking about a "huge arctic front" that would barrel down out of Canada to suck the bottom out of thermometers and drop "significant amounts of freezing precipitation."
___How could we believe them? People around here were considering changing out our closets, exchanging short pants for sweaters. We were thinking: "Man, I'm glad I live down in Texas and not up in New England. Pity those Yankees, up to their armpits in snow all winter."
___Before you could say, "Doppler radar," millions of Texans would've traded a foot of snow for an inch of ice.
___When it comes to weather, I'm a slow learner. But even I realized we were in for Something Big when my commute home Monday night lasted four hours. That's right; I averaged a zippy seven miles per hour.
___Gave me plenty of time to think about the Baptist Standard board meeting, which was to take place the next morning. Fortunately, "cooler" heads prevailed, and we called it off.
___From the looks of things, that happened across a huge swath of the state. Roads and airports closed. Traffic crawled. Folks stayed home if they could. Thanks to laptop computers and e-mail, the world of work didn't come to an end, but the pace changed.
___Wednesday afternoon, I got reacquainted with my snow shovel, which I hadn't used since we moved back to Texas eight winters ago. Right away, I remembered how easy it is to work up a huge sweat, even when the temperature is way, way low.
___As I shoveled, I thanked the Lord for the privilege of living in a place where the average high temperature in late February is 63 degrees. But I also thanked God for the infinite variety of weather, even weather that changes our plans and interrupts "important" work.
___Times like last week remind us how little we manage most of life's events. That's naturally vexing for control freaks like me. But it's also comforting to remember God is more creative than our calendars and more powerful than our plans.
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