I hear that we’re in for some hot weather this week. Forecasters are predicting that with a high-pressure area settling over us, we might break the 100-degree mark several times. It’s been a hot summer already. In fact, persons who study this sort of thing have concluded that July was our nation’s hottest month on record.
William Thorn meets every morning with a group of his senior adult cronies at a local Dairy Queen in Texas. He has recorded some of their observations and published them in a book entitled Dairy Queen Think Tank. He wrote, “Most of our discussions at the Dairy Queen involve the following: Digestive challenges, the cost of burial plots, how our high school reunions are not crowded anymore, and whether the weather is worse now than it used to be.”
I’m not sure about all of the items listed above, but I would insist that our weather is not worse now than it used to be. Here’s why I say that. Thirty summers ago, Danielle and I were living in Newark, Texas. I was about to finish up my seminary work and was pastoring First Baptist Church in Newark. That summer, the summer of 1980, was the hottest summer that I’ve ever experienced. In fact, it is still the hottest summer on record for the Fort Worth area. That summer we reached 100 degrees or higher on 69 days. In fact, we had 42 consecutive days (June 23 to August 3) on which the temperature was 100 or more degrees. During the month of July, it was over 100 degrees every single day. On June 26 and June 27 of that year, the temperature reached an all-time high of 113 degrees. It was not unusual for the temperature to be above 100 at 10 o’clock at night.
On some dairy farms, it was so hot and dry that summer that the cows started giving powdered milk. I knew it was hot when I looked out the window one day and saw a robin using a pot holder to pull a worm out of the ground. It was hot!
What do you do when the heat is on in life? How do you cope with the difficult stretches of life? The good news is that God gives us added grace and strength for the difficult miles of life.
During the summer of 2004, the Arizona Game and Fish Department encountered a unique problem. More than 30 endangered brown pelicans crashed onto sidewalks and roads in the state. Evidently the birds were confusing heat-induced mirages that appeared on the roads and sidewalks for actual water. Wildlife experts think the birds, which are not native to the state, migrated over from the West Coast due to a food shortage. Not being accustomed to the climate and terrain, the birds thought they were diving into water and dived into the pavement instead.
God’s help in the hot, difficult days of life is not a mirage. It is a reality. God promised His people through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint” (Jer. 31:25). That is comforting to know when the heat is on!
