I had to endure the skating rink outside of our house this morning as I had a meeting on the north side. It was pretty slick on our driveway and on our street, which made scraping the ice off my car even more fun. I almost fell once, but ended up being impressed with my agility. It wasn’t a thick covering of ice on the car, like it had been a couple of times over the last few weeks, but the ice under foot made it difficult to scrape.
Everything was covered in ice: the car, the pavement, the mailboxes, the trees. It was absolutely gorgeous. It felt like I was in a crystal snow-globe. I was amazed at how coated the trees were…every little branch was covered with a layer of the cold crystal. It looked awesome. But then as I started driving to my meeting, I noticed that this picturesque scene had some major problems—some trees were bent over from the weight of the ice; some trees had broken limbs. Something that seemed so great was causing some serious damage.
And that got me thinking…so many times in life the things that “look” so great, end up causing us so much hurt and damage. When we sin, we do so thinking that it will be fun, or good for us, or even worse, knowing it’s bad but continuing in the desires of our humanness. We have to realize how harmful this is for us and our walks with the Lord and how disastrous it is for our witness. These behaviors will leave us bent and broken.
The only way to get rid of those layers and layers of sinful behaviors is to rely on the Son to melt them away. You see, later in the day, we had to run out for a while and the sun was lower and shining through the crystallized trees. It was amazingly better than before; it was if the trees were producing light themselves as they allowed the sun to shine through.
So, rely on Jesus to melt away those earthly pleasures. Walk in His ways and allow the Son to shine through you. Walk with Him…walk with Him now so that you’ll be able to one day walk in His Kingdom—and it will be infinitely better than walking in a crystal snow-globe.
Today was such a gorgeous day. It was warm and the sun was out, yet there was a cool breeze at times that almost made it feel like fall again (which happens to be my favorite season). But the birds were chirping in a way that you knew it was spring. It was wonderful. I drove with the windows down on my way home from church this afternoon and had them open again as I went back to church for the class I was teaching. It was absolutely heavenly.
Indiana has really weird winters for me, since I grew up in Wisconsin which was simply cold and snowy (the area where I grew up set a record this year with 82 inches of snow). But here, it’s weird. One day it’s in the single digits and snow, to ice and freezing rain the next, to 60 degrees the next, followed by single digits again. There is no predictability to it at all; it’s a meteorological roller-coaster.
And that got me thinking…Indiana weather is the way we live our lives. Our emotions and feelings ride that same roller-coaster—we have our good days and our bad days and our blah days and our in-between days. And that’s okay—we were designed to have and feel all of those emotions and feelings. But I praise God for His presence in my life so that I have more good days than bad days. And I have a joy deep within that no feeling can take away; it doesn’t matter what happens in life. Sure I have my down days, but I don’t lose that joy.
So, for those of us here in Indiana, don’t get so upset that we live on this meterological roller-coaster. Enjoy the ride—enjoy the highs, the lows, the corkscrews. Instead of being upset that it was 60 degrees today and we’re going to be under a Winter Storm Warning tomorrow, be thankful we saw a glimpse of spring before it was time.
For those of you who don’t know Christ, get to know Him…it’ll change your life. You’ll still have all the emotions and feelings, but in those down days—with the joy of the Lord within you—it doesn’t feel as bad. It’s like a glimpse of spring.
