March 31, 2003
DOWN HOME:
Skeeter-eaters & God's providence
___Alrighty then. What was the point of the Deep Freeze of '03?
___You remember: Late February, just about the time you imagined you could start thinking about possibly maybe sorta putting away sweaters and pulling out short sleeves.
___We got iced. Sleet and freezing rain glazed much of Texas like a vast windswept Krispy Kreme donut. For parts of three days, hardly anything moved around these parts. Schools closed; businesses shuttered. Folks stayed home, got a good dose of daytime TV and thanked God they had a real job so they didn't have to endure daytime TV all the time.
___I don't know about you, but I'm a fairly regimented guy. OK, I'm a really regimented guy. My friend Dan has known me for years and theorizes my mom must've potty-trained me at gunpoint. I like order a little too much for my own good. But I enjoy a routine.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___And being the shadetree theologian that I am, I'm forevermore trying to figure out "meaning" in things that happen in life.
___So, you correctly guessed that part of the time I spent iced in I also spent trying to determine the point or the reason for such an annoying late-winter routine-interrupter.
___I came up with three reasons why God might have visited the Deep Freeze of '03 upon us. Two still make sense, but the third has been cast into serious doubt.
___First, the ice storm gave families time together. Even with laptop computers and cell phones, a few days disrupted by weather meant folks stayed home together. This is good. God likes family time.
___Second, the cold spell gave us a great excuse to burn up some of our Y2K firewood. You recall how people prepared for the new millennium. We didn't go whole-hog end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it back then, but we did buy a stack of firewood. Four years later, it's dry. Burns great. And next time, if we lose our plumbing, maybe we'll drink our Y2K water.
___Third, I thought--no, I hoped and prayed--the late hard freeze would eliminate this year's flock of skeeter-eaters. Do you get those bugs at your house? I don't think they actually eat mosquitoes, or I probably would love them. However, we call them skeeter-eaters because they look like mosquitoes on steroids.
___They arrive in clouds this time of year. Every time Betsy, our dog, goes in and out in the evening, no matter how fast you open and close the the door, 459 skeeter-eaters fly in. And they never fly out.
___I hoped this spring would be different. I thought the freeze would kill them. But to quote the "Poltergeist" girl, "They're baaaack."
___So much for trying to theologize the weather. The ways of God are vast and mysterious.
___And I bet the fat birds of springtime will thank the Lord for the bountiful feast of skeeter-eaters.
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