It's Saturday evening and I heard talk there was going to be rain today!

I heard a lot about it, it was on the weather channel and on the local news. At one point in the day the Nation Weather folks put a crawler across my TV screen warning me of high winds and possible flooding if I was in the right area. The thing is, I guess I wasn't.

Oh, there was a lot of expectation and clouds. The sky got dark, dark enough I had to turn lights on to see stuff. Dark enough that when I went to set the clocks back an hour I had to turn the light on to see what I was doing. But rain? Just a gentle, soft misting drizzle for the most part. It was wet outside, sure, but my dogs ran out in it and came back hardly wet at all. The ground was soaked, but what do you expect, even a little light rain adds up.

As for wind. I think I heard a whoosh pass over once. But this 50-70 mph blow everyone was warning me about just didn't happen. None of my trees swayed, and I have a lot of them to sway. I didn't even see a branch or extra leaf fall. No, there was a lot of hype but nothing much came of it.

You know, some folks skate through life like that. They live any old way they want, and those proverbs about treating your parents well so you can live a long life, etc mean nothing to them. Nothing ever happens to them, at least not much, and they never really think about their salvation. "Why get all worked up about it?" they say. "Bad stuff happens to other people, so why worry?" Everything's just fine with them, and as far as spiritual matters go they don't heed any of the warnings. They would have probably laughed at me as I brought in all the things I thought might blow away for no apparent reason. Of course that just makes the surprise they get when something happens to THEM all that much more complete!

When settlers started building around the Great Salt Lake, the Indians came and told them they were crazy. The lake floods, there are no outlets and many, many inlets. At first this was taken seriously, but after a while as the years rolled by no one really thought about it. Did you know the lake covers about 1700 miles? Did you further know that in 1986, after a lot of rain, the lake covered about 3300 miles? A whole bunch of home and business owners were made believers, when their property literally "went under!"

It's hard to convince our friends and neighbors they need to worry about rain when the sun is shining. People have successful careers, become self-reliant, and can't imagine anything coming along in life that they can't handle. I reckon that may be why Noah didn't get many takers, either, when he was building the ark. There's no doubt a day of judgment coming, when everyone will find out which way their wind will blow, and if they've built a life on sand or rock. On that day, the only "weather" we need to worry about is "whether" or not we're going to be ready for it!

One other thing though - I don't doubt the wind did blow. Tomorrow morning when I drive to church I will likely see broken branches and lots of puddles, and many of you may tell me about your experiences. Any fool could see that, right? Well... some folks live in God's world, obey God's laws of physics, watch God grow food to feed them and observe their own well-designed self healing bodies. They have eyewitness testimony about God's son. Yet they say there is no God! So may not just any fool can see what is so obvious, after all...

Randy