Day 213 - Rainmaker

 

It happened again this year.

It’s usually something which only the children notice. Every year, around the time that the children break up from school, the weather suddenly gets worse. Often, I’ve noticed, there are a few weeks, while the children are still at school, when the weather is great. Warm, sunny and cheerful. But as soon as children are free from school, the weather turns bad. I can’t explain it – but you could probably test my theory next year (if you and I are still around). It’s an irony. Murphy’s Law. It doesn’t make sense. I do feel that only the children notice it.

God allows it for purposes of his own. But, as I noted in my book Irony – what do such things say about the character of God?

 

I had a conversation with my brother about a topic similar to this. It went something like this:

Ad: “What about that hurricane in America – it’s looks pretty serious?”

Me: “Yes, it looks bad – I think some people are going to die because of it.”

Ad: “Not very nice of God, is it?”

Me (taking the bait): “I don’t think you can blame God for the weather.”

Ad: “You can’t blame God for the weather? Really? What can you blame him for then?”

 

Afterwards I thought a little about what my brother had said. And I thought he had a point. Global warming aside – there really is a sense in which God allows the weather we experience.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a climate change denier – I really do think that mankind has pretty much caused havoc to this ecosystem which we call the earth, through lazy choices, lack of accountability and greed. But alongside that, I do think that it’s a bit of an excessive responsibility for mankind to take the blame for the effects of El Niño or the jet stream. Even if you were of the opinion that modern man was to blame for these things, there would have been a time in which we were not and maybe we are just in the grey area of only being partly to blame for it all. It’s not all our fault. Besides, the devil has a scorched earth policy.

That, of course, doesn’t help the child who notices that as soon as the summer holidays arrive it begins to rain heavily. And if God has allowed such things, then what does that say about the character of God? Is this sun really shining benevolently behind the rainclouds?

Check out my summer holiday theory next year – this year it wasn’t so obvious because there was a bit of rain before the holidays arrived. However, I did wake up on the first day of the holidays and instantly knew that the children were off school because it was such bad weather. I do think it proves Murphy’s Law (which is a little more optimistic than Sod’s Law in that it states that ‘IF anything can go wrong it will’ (implying that things can be prepared for), whereas Sod’s Law states that ‘Whatever you do, everything will go wrong at the worst possible time’). See, I’m really quite a positive person…

Of course, if, next year, the summer holidays do begin with fine weather then it will signify a kind of Sod’s Law now for me, but I will have also have single-handedly changed the weather pattern with these very words.

If I were praying, I might say: ‘Let the children have some decent weather, God. They are already under a lot of pressure and get too many nightmares of too many kinds. At least give them some half-decent weather.’

But I’m not.

And that wasn’t a prayer, it was me saying that if the Almighty wants praise, then he is going to have to take his share of the blame as well. By virtue of having greater responsibility due to having ultimate and absolute power.

Above these storm clouds, the sun may still be shining benevolently. Don’t get me wrong, that’s nice to think about.

But it’s not very helpful when you’re in a storm is it?