Alabama Weather. God’s Word.

There’s a fun (and scarily accurate) saying around here: “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour.”

Yes, there are days that are just hot, hot, and hotter, and others where it seems to rain forever. But, at the same time, Alabama weather gets four very distinct seasons with wide variations within each one.

In a four-day period just last week, we had 80-degree temps with unstable air that produced 10 tornadoes in North Alabama alone, widespread property damage, but thankfully no fatalities, and hail described as both golf-ball-sized and grapefruit-sized. The next day was cold, overcast and windy. The one after that brought freeze warnings, and yet the next one saw temps back up to the 60’s. Similar variations have occurred this week, without the tornadoes — hallelujah!

When we’re not particularly happy about the weather we’re experiencing on any given day, I think it’s helpful to remember that God is the Creator of weather . . . and everything else, for that matter. HE’S in charge, and HE has His reasons for whatever may fall from the sky or swirl through the atmosphere.

Read this passage in The Message paraphrase where Job explains WHY certain weather-related events occur:

Job 37:1-13 – “Whenever this happens, my heart stops—I’m stunned, I can’t catch my breath.
Listen to it! Listen to His thunder, the rolling, rumbling thunder of His voice.
He lets loose His lightnings from horizon to horizon, lighting up the earth from pole to pole.
In their wake, the thunder echoes His voice, powerful and majestic.
He lets out all the stops, He holds nothing back.
    No one can mistake that voice—
His word thundering so wondrously, His mighty acts staggering our understanding.
He orders the snow, ‘Blanket the earth!’
    and the rain, ‘Soak the whole countryside!’
No one can escape the weather—it’s there.
    And no one can escape from God.
Wild animals take shelter, crawling into their dens,
When blizzards roar out of the north and freezing rain crusts the land.
It’s God’s breath that forms the ice, it’s God’s breath that turns lakes and rivers solid.
And yes, it’s God who fills clouds with rainwater and hurls lightning from them every which way.
He puts them through their paces—first this way, then that— commands them to do what He says all over the world.
Whether for discipline or grace or extravagant love, He makes sure they make their mark.”

What an amazing passage of Scripture!

In the last line, did you catch the reasons Job gives for God’s actions? For discipline or grace or extravagant love. In the King James version, the words are: “for correction, or for His land, or for mercy.” The New International Version reads: “He brings the clouds to punish people,
or to water His earth and show His love.” We all remember times in the Bible when God withheld rain for a time or even caused fire to rain down from heaven. After all, He has the whole of creation at His disposal to use as He sees fit. 

Jeremiah 10:12-13 in the NIV explains it this way: “But God made the earth by his power; He founded the world by His wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding.  When He thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from His storehouses.”

And probably my favorite passage about God and the weather is in Luke 8:23-25 which describes Jesus commanding the raging storm to obey Him. Awesome.

He IS in control. The weather on any given day might not fit my agenda or be “convenient” in my finite view of things. I can’t change it. I just need to remember what The Word says, be patient and trust.