Seriously, God...you change the weather for me?
'Cause at the end of the day there ain't much that I need. But You're the one thing I do. Just give me You. Terrian "Just Give Me You"
On Monday, I started to see amateur meteorologists posting on my city’s reddit channel about a big spring storm hitting us on Tuesday. The intense red on the map squarely hit our city and could spawn hail and tornados unlike anything we have seen in decades.
On the day of, emails from schools, work, and even a home irrigation company alerted me to the chance of extreme severe weather. When some random company is emailing you about weather, you know the hype is at an all time high. Citizens were posting how the rivers were well beyond past their usual boundaries and the ground was already saturated, so watch out for flooding.
In the mid-afternoon dark clouds had formed, and by the time I heard the distinctive pssst sound from my kid’s bus stopping, rain had peppered the ground. Full of all smiles, likely because school was out, my sons ran up our driveway and entered the house ready for a snack. As a first grader and just as a human being my youngest is a very nervous and anxious kid, so I wondered how much I should share about this storm. Should I mention the tornadoes? The flooding? Taking him aside seemed too dramatic, so while avoiding eye contact and filling my glass with water, I told him a storm with possible flooding and tornados was coming and if we needed to go to the basement just quickly follow me. Short and sweet.
Maybe short and sweet wasn’t the way to go because when I looked over at him his smile was gone and his eyes were big.
“I’m going to pray,” my son yelled as he ran past me to his room and shut the door, my wife trailing behind him since I had to jump on to virtual meeting call in another room. It isn’t unlike me to drop bombs on the kids and my wife cleans up.
As I sat in front of my computer I checked the scene through my window to see what chaos would ensue. With each 15 minute interval I waited for the hail, but nothing came. I waited for the flooding and the opposite was happening that even the sprinkles stopped. I waited for it to get dark and windy and all I saw was a kind of yellowish tint to the atmosphere. Was this the storm of the decade? A yell from my wife got me to my feet, and I rushed out of my room to the family room expecting some kind of news that a tree had fallen.
“It’s a rainbow,” my daughter squealed.
“What?” my youngest answered with a long drawn out voice. “Does this mean there’s no storm?”
With awe and wonder on their faces, my daughter and youngest son opened up the back sliding door and traced the arc of the rainbows with their fingers.
“A rainbow represents a promise,” my wife told my son. “You see, God answered your prayer.”
“What did he pray?” I asked her.
“He prayed the storm wouldn’t come here, and as I’ve been watching the radar the storm completely split in half.
For a moment, as I watched my children continue to ooh and ah over the rainbow, I wondered if God had answered his prayer. Could God have heard the prayer of a little boy? Seriously, God? You do that? Does his one prayer make a difference? Can our prayer change the weather that affects tens of thousands of people? Where was my child-like faith?
Recently, my youngest has asked me what if God isn’t real? Could someone really die and come back to life? It does sound ridiculous I told him. We’ve never entertained Santa Claus or Elves-on-shelves as real, so I told him some do believe Jesus is a myth like Santa. Why is it hard to believe we asked each other. Is it because we can’t see God?
Even more than my son, I felt like I needed to see a sign of God and that rainbow and avoidance of a storm was comforting for me…and I think for my first-grader. It was a reminder to me that God is with us in the visible and invisible. That though he controls the lives of so many he can laser focus on us individually. This I cannot understand with my mind, but Jesus surprised me this week, and I left with the sense I am safe in the arms of an infinite God. Thank you for your promises. You are all we need.
Here’s a link of a testimony of a well known mythologist who found in his heart Christ is not a myth. He had grown up in the church, but it never settled for him until much later when he eventually answered Christ’s call after a series of God encounters.
How did God surprise you this week? Any prayer answered, no matter how small, that points you back to Christ?