Who Controls The Weather? (Hint: Not Man…)
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(6) The Lord does whatever pleases Him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. (7) He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from His storehouses.’ (Psalm 135:6-7); ‘Be glad, people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for He has given you the autumn rains because He is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before.’ (Joel 2:23)
Who controls the weather? Though there are folks who believe in anthropologic climate change (or man either controls or has great influence on the weather), the Bible states otherwise. It is God who has set up the seasons, for planting and for harvest. We often hear in the news of ‘global warming’ in the summertime and ‘global cooling’ in the winter, and the theories often are that the burning of fossil fuels, aerosol can discharge, and even cattle flatulence are creating changes in the environment. The truth is man has very little effect on the weather as a whole. In Joel 2:23, the prophet discusses the equinox seasons of spring and autumn (or fall), when the crops are to be planted and then, after the summer, are to be harvested before the winter season comes.
Solomon understood the ‘seasons’, both in the lives of people and the weather in Ecclesiastes 3:2, which he tells us there is a ‘time to sow and a time to reap’. Jewish holidays are celebrated for the ‘time to sow’ (Shevat) and the ‘time to reap’ (Sukkot), as it brings new life (or ‘trees’ in the case of Shevat) and later the harvest of the food from the new life (Sukkot).
God allows the rains to come, when needed. In Psalm 135:7, when He deems it necessary to rain, He brings it, often with the fanfare of thunder and lightning. He can bring the rain as long as necessary to complete His plans, as He did when it rained for 40 days and nights to flood the earth and set Noah sailing away in the ark (Genesis 6 – 9), and the storm on the sea that forced the sailors to throw Jonah overboard in order to end it (Jonah 1).
God also withheld the rains to create droughts; one was to force Jacob and his sons to go to Egypt to be reunited with Joseph (Genesis 42 -47), another was Elijah praying for a drought that lasted 3½ years (1 Kings 17:1; James 5:17) due to the sins of the leaders of Israel. The best example of God controlling the weather was when Jesus was sleeping when the Apostles were terrified by a storm that whipped up while they were sailing on the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus, after chastising them for having little Faith in waking Him up, spoke and ended the storm (Matthew 8:23-27).
It is folly to think we can control the weather. While we can seed a cloud to make rain, or through our cityscapes can make a city footprint a bit warmer due to the buildings and pavement, we have a very miniscule effect on weather. Anything man has done in attempting to control nature (building dams, realigning rivers) is done in the knowledge the Lord has provided and in accordance in His plans (whether it is acknowledged or not). As all things man does, though, it is temporary. Only the Lord can make it snow in Idaho while making it ‘bake’ in New England! Enjoy the rains He brings and the sunny (or if in the Redoubt, snowy) weather He provides.
