I’ve been told by a number of people that I need to stop talking about the weather. It started early in my ministry here at Peace in Christ: I was asked to pray for rain on a Sunday, and a few days later Hurricane Ida passed through Frederick. Likewise, it seems that any time I talk about how nice the weather will be, it ends up snowing! March is a good example. It came in with a storm, and is going out like a lion. 

Frankly, I’m at the point where I can deal with wasps (one of my own great fears, along with heights) and mosquitoes (a great annoyance) so long as we have warm weather. Yet even then, Spring brings its own problems. With the warmth comes rain, allergies, and weeds. 

As a native Californian, I used to detest the humidity of Chicago, St. Louis, Fairfax Station, and Frederick. But now I welcome it with outstretched arms and an open heart. No doubt when it’s August and swampy, I’ll be pining for snow and February.

And so, I pray daily for “seasonable weather.”

But what is “seasonable weather”? In California, we have Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, which once broke heat records with a temperature of 134.1°F, in 1915. There are a number of further unverified heat records, but if all of the unverified records were verified, the highest still would stand in Death Valley, with a temperature of 201.0°F, recorded (but not verified) in 1972.

In Frederick, the highest recorded temperature was 109°F, and the lowest recorded temperature was −21°F. For everyone shivering, the lowest recorded temperature on Earth was recorded in Antarctica in 1983. It was a whopping −128.6°F. To keep my own perspective on things, I always keep the weather data for the city of Yakutsk, in Siberia, on my phone, as it has an average winter mean temperature of −34.6°F. So I remind myself that things could always be worse.

And I still pray daily for “seasonable weather.”

This world is marred and broken as a result of the fall. We have wild weather. We have strange weather. And the weather’s only getting wilder and stranger.

As we enter into Spring, and then into Summer, I ask that you would join with me in praying for “seasonable weather.” There are a lot of farmers that need it, especially around here.

Scripture tells us that all of creation sings the glory of its creator (Ps. 19:1-3), which means that even those 109° days and −21° temperatures glorify God. I just pray that in seasonable weather, those days may remain records, and few and far between.

May God grant us a blessed Spring and Summer, and may we delight in God’s creation!

Pax Christi,

~ Pastor