Part of the Deal

It’s been a warmer for the last week or so.  I lot of people like that, including me.  I’ve told you before that winter is my least favorite season.  Before this last week, we had a LOT of very cold days.  In fact, I heard a lot of people say something like, “This has really been a long winter.  I’ll be so glad when winter is over.”

Well, again, I’ll be glad when winter’s over, too.  I’m always glad when winter’s over.  But in fact, this has not been a particularly long winter.  November of 2016 was wonderful.  We had several days in the 60s and even a couple in the 70s.  The weather didn’t really start to turn until the first week of December.  And December around here is—guess what—winter!

Now, of course, it could still turn out to be a long winter.  We don’t know how long this warm spell will last.  We could have a cold March.  We could have snow storms into April.  It’s not the most common thing, but we’ve all seen our share of them. 

But as of right now, it has not been a long winter at all.  December is supposed to be winter.  January is supposed to be winter.  February is supposed to be winter.  I’m not saying you have to like it.  I don’t like it.  I wish we’d had those highs in the 60s and 70s all winter.  But we know that’s not how it works.  We know that December and January and February are going to be cold.  We know they’re going to windy—pretty much every month around here is windy.  And we know it’s going to be hard to get around.  That’s just part of the deal with winter in this area, and it doesn’t do any good to complain about it.

And that’s my point.  It’s no good to complain about things that are just part of the deal.  And we know that.  And yet, we do it.  We do it all the time.  I do it, too.  We complain about things that we know are just part of the way life works.

Now, I’m not saying this is a terrible sin.  But it doesn’t make a lot of sense.  And it’s kind of disrespectful to God, in a way.  To continue with our example, winter is the way it is around here because that’s the way God set up the world.  To complain about it is, in effect, to say that God messed up when God created the world this way.  It’s saying we know more about how the world should be set up than God does.

So, the next time it gets cold or windy or snowy and I start complaining about it, I’m going to try to remember this.  It gets cold or windy or snowy in the winter because that’s the way God set up the world.  And God knows a lot more about how the world should be set up than I do.  If I remember that, maybe I’ll quit complaining.  Maybe I’ll even remember what the Bible says.  “This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!”