As I write, it is 52 degrees and sunny outside. If you dont look at the calendar, it feels like March or April. The daffodils have been fooled, the trees are blooming. We had one little snow and now spring is edging into February. I love spring, its my favorite season. Usually when a day like this comes in March, I go crazy buying soil and seeds. But this year it feels so premature, like an interruption in the normal cycle of things. I look out the window and my inner clock says, "this is just not right".
I was thinking today that the weather and thus, seasons, are something beyond our control. They are subject to forces greater than us. The tilt of the earth, the patterns of the rain, the directions of the wind. Even with all the money we spend to predict the weather, all we can do is predict it, we cannot change it. It is given, not taken.
Thus are the seasons of life. We make plans, we do the best we know how to make a good life, but some things are beyond our control. Life comes, death comes. Friends disappoint, family falls ill. Loved ones move, jobs change. Some events are blessings we could never have imagined. Some are hard, very hard.
I have lived around fatalists- people who face the world believing that bad things happen and there is nothing you can do about it. I have also lived around control freaks- who believe that with enough hard work just about anything can be changed.
I probably lean to the control freak side, but as I get older I see that there are some choices placed in our hands and others that are beyond us. Sometimes action is the cure, and sometimes prayer is the hope.
I am taking this warm winter as a gift from God to those of us who heat with oil ($$$$!!!!). It is crazy warm here too (relatively speaking) and very little snow, but I'm so grateful!!
ReplyDeleteThere are times when you can do nothing, and times when you can solve it yourself, but so often prayer and action go hand in hand, don't they? You do as much as you can and pray that God makes up the difference....
Beautifully said. I find it so difficult when things are out of my hands. With my mom's cancer diagnosis, I felt so powerless and, sometimes, I felt like prayer wasn't enough. But I love how you said it: "sometimes prayer is the hope."
ReplyDeleteThis weather is incredible. I've been opening my windows even though it is in the 50s. And there are buds on our trees, too.