WINTER IS COMING

I dislike cold, icy, snowy winters. That is a big reason I was happy living in Mexico for many years. But now my wife and I are in Canada, and yesterday it snowed. It is early in the year for snow, and they were wispy flakes that didn’t stick, but they were a harbinger of what is sure to follow. It has been below zero most nights and not much above it in the daytime. Did I already say I dislike winter?

To be forewarned is to be forearmed, but I wonder if in this case it is just making me suffer in my mind today what I might have to endure tomorrow. And that is just the opposite of what the Bible says to do. “Do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own,” Jesus said to His disciples. “Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.” Now that doesn’t mean not to prepare for the future, but it does mean we aren’t supposed to let worries about bad things that might happen tomorrow ruin our today.

The apostle James said to not count on tomorrow at all. “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and carry on our business and make money.’ Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You are [really] but a wisp of vapor (a puff of smoke, a mist) that is visible for a little while and then disappears [into thin air].”

I might not even be around tomorrow, let alone for the winter. I could be like Mark Twain who wrote, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened.”

And really, when it comes down to it, endurance isn’t that hard. If I can just take things day by day, every day that passes is one fewer to worry about. If I can make it through one day, making it through the next probably won’t seem quite as hard. So when the snow here is up to the window tops in a few months, it will simply mean that winter is peaking and soon it will be over.

I’ll survive. I might even learn to ski.

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James 5:16 ESV / Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

1 Timothy 2:1 ESV / First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,

Luke 10:19 ESV / Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.