Man’s Folly Is Found Where God Has Control
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(26) How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of His years is past finding out. (27) He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; (28) the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind. (29) Who can understand how He spreads out the clouds, how He thunders from His pavilion? (30) See how He scatters His lightning about Him, bathing the depths of the sea. (31) This is the way He governs the nations and provides food in abundance. (32) He fills His hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark. (33) His thunder announces the coming storm; even the cattle make known its approach.’ (Job 36:26-33)
As with everything that we experience in our mortal lives, we often think we have a great influence over our environment, whether that is in relationships, situations, politics, and even the weather. The effect on the weather and the climate by man has been in the news for quite a while with the belief by some we have changed the climate through the use of fossil fuels. Recently, there has been talk of creating technology to ‘shade’ the sun’s heat and light to help cool the Earth, to avoid ‘global warming’. Historically, there have been mixed results of cloud-seeding (applying salts or dry ice into clouds) in order to increase the chances of rain for crops.
For climate change, the efforts to ‘solve’ the perceived issues often bring other problems. The proposal to stop the use of petroleum has suggested the use of electronic vehicles (EVs), which are touted as ‘zero’ emissions. However, the pollution caused by the mining of ‘rare-earth’ materials have caused issues in some 3rd-world countries, and until we solve the efficiency of solar and wind power, the came amount of fossil fuel emissions occur through their use by electric power plants creating the electricity to charge the growing number of EVs, and it is likely more materials will be needed to increase the power grids around the world to handle the growth of EVs.
Man has also used dams and canals to alter the flow and direction of rivers, creating reservoirs and lakes for crop irrigation. The Hoover Dam, between Arizona and Nevada, is one the largest man-made objects in order to ‘tame’ the Colorado River for irrigation, power generation and water for residents in the ‘dry’ Western US region. Even in areas of success, like the Hoover Dam, there are always dependencies of that success based on factors out of man’s control.
Lake Mead, created by Hoover Dam, was almost ‘dry’ last year due to the lack of precipitation further north which is needed to feed the Colorado River. Without the rain, there is no water for the Hoover Dam to hold back, and thus Lake Mead’s water level dropped greatly, and the power generated from its hydroelectric plant was cut in half. It took nature (from God) to provide ample snowfall and rain to begin filling the Colorado River, which in turn increased the water level of Lake Mead.
Man’s folly is found where God has control. What man builds will, given enough time, falter. But it is our Lord who controls the weather. As Job states, He is the one who controls the rain and clouds, the thunder and the lightning. God set perfectly the Earth and the Sun in the Solar System, in an arm in the Milky Way Galaxy, inside his Universe that He created; why do we think we can control what God has put into motion, when it is He who created it all?
When Jesus was on the boat asleep, and a storm caused great fear among the disciples, only Jesus could calm the storm with his command (Matthew 8:26). Only our Triune God can control that which He made; none of the men with Jesus could do anything but pray and seek Him. If we want change in any facet of our environment, we must seek Jesus or else we only are spinning our wheels.
