A Road Less Travelled

Peoria is hot right now. There’s this thing called summer that comes around every year and makes the outdoors a miserable place to be. The sun comes close enough to burn the trees as if Apollos has given up his reins again and the humidity is so high the fish all go on walkabout in the air. People hide in their houses with the air conditioning running and nobody thinks any less of them. I’ve heard a couple people say that Peoria summers don’t qualify as natural disasters, but they come from Houston, Texas so I don’t really think they have a good basis for comparison.

I am not in Peoria right now. You might have noticed. Erie summers are hot and muggy and yucky, but not so bad that air conditioning is an assumption. Case in point, Josh and Adiel don’t have air conditioning. I’m not even sure how you would run a/c into this old house. As I was looking forward to this trip I started thinking about the heat and wondering how I would deal with it since I’m not used to it. I’ve been so coddled by air conditioning that the thought of being without it made me feel… concerned. I’ve been listening to a series of sermons on prayer lately and bits of the sermons echoed in my head right as I was about to start fretting. I started to feel really silly. How was my worrying and fretting going to help anything? If I really had a concern why not go talk to the Person in charge of the heat and the weather? If He decided the heat would be good for me then prayer would give me chance to get my attitude in order before I was way hot.

So I prayed. And I’m certainly not saying this to pat myself on the back because talking to the Almighty really should be a Christian’s first response to anything. We, I, shouldn’t have to be reminded so often. Anyway, I prayed. And it’s cool outside.

It was a little muggy today, but nothing close to what I was concerned about. I’m sleeping with my window open and no fan and I’ve woken up cold some mornings. We went to the zoo, we went for a walk, we played outside and I never once just wanted to fall over dead because I was so hot.

Thank You, God, for the weather. I thank You for the sun You are keeping from burning us and for the clouds You are blowing away. I thank You for the breeze and the wind and the cold mornings You have given me. You stuffed more into my present box than I ever knew could fit in there. Thank You.