A Prayer

Father,

It's cold. It's April and it's been snowing. Everybody has noticed, some have complained, and we're all wondering. After all, this weather is coming from You, like it says.

He gives snow like wool; he scatters frost like ashes. He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs; who can stand before his cold? (Psalms 147:16-17)

What confuses us is that You're the one who promised the seasons.

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. (Genesis 8.22)

This cold April doesn't fit our expectations. It doesn't seem to fit what You normally do.

What we need to see is that You're not trapped by Your own rules. There are times when You just break some of them. Some of those times people get annoyed and complain. But other times they are amazed at some miraculous thing that You just did and give thanks.

You get to break Your own rules.

And when You do that, it's always the right thing for You to do. You certainly have Your reasons when You do that, reasons that You need not share with us. But in due time we will come to see the wisdom of all that You have done, including when You have broken Your own rules.

Father, You don't fit into the neat boxes that we have carefully created for You. You continue to surprise us with what You do and don't do. We need to get the lesson that You're not at all like us. You're not just some human inflated to super-size. You're God. And You do lots of things that make absolutely no sense to us. Lots of good and wise and loving things that confuse us.

So, Father, grant to us a greater measure of humility. Help us to see more clearly the difference between who we are and who You are. You get to make all the rules, not us. And You get to break them sometimes, not us. Humble us so that understanding reality better we would submit to You better. That is, after all, what we were created to do.

Through Christ our Lord, Amen.