It’s March 1st and another snowstorm is sweeping across the eastern United States. It’s cold and snowy and bitter outside, and if I could have reached through my dashboard to the Christian DJ who predicted “gusty breezes in the week ahead,” I might have shaken him pretty good.
“Gusty breezes???” Who is he kidding. The euphemism isn’t fooling any of us this far into the season.
And euphemisms weren’t the only thing from some long past English class that floated through my head this morning.
It’s March 1st, and I’m also reciting the cliche, March comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb, as if saying it will make it come true, but while I’m saying it, I’m really thinking, “blah blah blah,” as I wonder yet again how many more days I’ll have to turn up the heat in the morning and how many more times we’d wait to hear whether school will be delayed – AGAIN!
And I can’t help but look up and say,
“Dear God, you know it’s March, right?”
“Dear Jesus, there will be warmer days ahead, right?”
And as the dreary gray skies and bitter cold winds rattle our bones, I can’t help but wonder what God is thinking up there!
And I’m not alone!
Almost every time I turn around, someone mentions being ready for Spring. They ask when God will bring the warmth or they say they’ll need to have a word with mother nature, which I am going to assume they mean as a joke, not as a replacement for our Lord! 🙂
In my classes I take prayer requests from my students and almost no class goes by without someone praying for Spring and warmth and sun, and I wholeheartedly second that request.
But it also makes me think and wonder about all the things we remind God of.
Dear God, my car is on the fritz again…
Dear Father, I have a big job interview coming up…
Dear Lord, I lost my car keys…
(I should make a recording of that one!)
Dear Jesus, if you could just bring my husband home…
Dear God, if I could just have straight hair…
Dear Mother Mary, my child needs… please pray for us…
Hey God, it’s March, can you please bring the warmth?
When life gets overwhelming, from little things like perpetually lost car keys and crazy hair to unspeakably devastating things like a broken family or hurting child, we often wonder where God is.
We pray as though we are reminding Him of our situation. We pray reminding Him of how we think things should be resolved.
But maybe we should be praying differently.
We must pray without ceasing as we are instructed to do for help and guidance, for comfort and strength, for wisdom and peace. Praying is a good thing, a necessary thing, a wonderful and loving and strong thing, but we must remember that God already knows our wishes, our most secret deepest desires, those truths we hide even from ourselves.
The Lord, who knows every hair on our heads, knows all and will resolve all issues for Good when we are faithful to Him. He often sees outcomes we cannot begin to imagine and brings warmth and sunlight from places we don’t expect them to appear.
What’s more, when we are faithful, that warmth and sun feel infinitely better than they would have had we never experienced the cold darkness of winter.
God doesn’t need our reminders of how we would like life to turn out any more than He needs our reminders that it’s March or that Spring should be coming soon.
Consider it all Joy my brothers – even this cold winter, for it too shall pass. God is in control and He has already sent The Son to warm your heart.
In the meantime, take comfort, He knows it’s been a long cold season. He knows it’s March, and he will send the warmth when He’s ready.
God Bless…
