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My thoughts on weather had run generally in the direction of its significance in our lives (deeper than we realize) and a few suggestions about our weather-talk. I think what it came down to was this: There's something cloudy and sunny about everybody's weather, so let's be nice to each other.
It hadn't occurred to me to put weather into some kind of biblical framework.
It occurred to R. Paul Stevens, associate professor of applied theology at Regent College, however, and I'm grateful. Stevens declares that there are "good theological reasons" for getting out and experiencing the weather. Weather, he says, is part of the spiritual journey: "God not only makes weather; God is a weather person. God delights to make weather. Every day is a different day with different weather, a unique creation of God."
And so goes the article, looking at what the Bible says about weather as mystery, weather as metaphor, weather as ministry, weather as problem, and weather wisdom.
Weather as mystery is shown in texts like Job 38:22-37, where God's weather-talk is used to arouse Job to worship ("the very thing weather is supposed to do").
Scripture also uses weather to express truth in images, as, for example, when the work of the Spirit is compared to the wind, or Christ's return compared to a bolt of lightning.
Biblical preachers talked about God's providence through weather in order to lead people to faith, to lead them to glorify God. That's weather as ministry.
Occasionally the Bible refers to weather as judgement. Even "bad" weather has its spiritual uses, inviting us to depend on God. While some weather "hurts", Stevens says, "other weather heals."
Weather wisdom? This is to recognize that we are not under weather's control. "We are to be respectful, reverent, inquiring, investigative, prayerful but not totally compliant." This means "bundling up when it is cold and rainy and going for that daily walk, holding the marriage seminar in the thick of a blizzard, teaching school in the middle of a heat wave and not staying home because there is a cloud on the horizon".
"In the end," Stevens concludes, "all weather is God's weather, and God can be trusted with our lives, whatever the weather does to us."
"Toward a Theology of Weather Watching" will be included in Dictionary of Everyday Life, which Paul Stevens is editing together with Robert Banks, forthcoming from Intervarsity Press. If this one entry indicates the insights of the whole, it's a book to look forward to.
Dora Dueck is a writer and a member of Jubilee Mennonite Church in Winnipeg.
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