Post by bluemingidiot on May 10, 2023 0:35:59 GMT
I have various memories of clouds growing up. I have memories of the sound rain made, like it was trying to get me but the house or car wouldn't let it. Like an older lady's cologne, I liked the way it smelled. Rain and wind was scary like a parent's anger. But if you were still and quiet, it would eventually go away.
I remember my grandparents frequent and anxious comments about rain. I remember the Radio weather reports in the 50s and 60s were a joke. They would get one or two weather reports a day and read them over and over. If a weather line came through mid-morning, and moved on, they would still repeat printout for the rest of the day that there was a chance of storms and rain when the sky was clear as a bell. Many times I thought to myself they could give a better weather report than what the government sent if they just looked at the sky and the horizons when they stepped outside the stations to smoke a cigarette.
My grandfather had been disappointed so many times by the government issued weather report that he could no longer listen to it being read over the radio. Older people as they got TVs in the 50s and 60s, watched it very little. National news was just 30 minutes a day and the only thing that my grandparents cared about were major weather events. Local weather was interesting to the extent that maps helped give movement of weather. Area highs and lows, as well as rainfall amounts were interesting to make the weather report a daily devotional in most homes.
Weatherpersons are like politicians, they lie a lot. Even so, we keep on reelecting the politicians and we keep on watching and reading the weather reports. As unfaithful as they are, and as misguided though it be, we keep putting our faith and trust in them.
We had good chances of rain last weekend. Each day hand a strong cloud build up. But we only got a trace amount.
I try to thank God for the blessings that the rains brought to those that had experienced them. But there is often anger and resentment in my heart, sometimes directed against myself, and sometimes directed against God. With more than a third of the year gone, total rainfall was just 3.2". It was when the chances were good and yet time after time we got no rain that my resentment was worse.
Yesterday the weather reports put our chances at between slim and none. As I drove back from Fredericksburg in 98 degree temperature, I noticed how anemic and feeble the cloud build up was. Drought is tiresome to one's spirit.
In west Texas, especially for older folks, watching it rain on someone else, is better than anything on TV. One can remember times when they were the ones receiving rain. Or they can hallucinate about experiencing rain themselves.
Yesterday evening we sat in our rockers on the front porch and watched one thundershower 30 miles to the west and one 50 miles to the east. The one to the east was beautiful reflecting the setting sunlight. It continued eastward where new moisture awaited that would keep it strong. The one to the west was like a herd animal who sees a predator and realizes it has strayed too far from the herd's safety. The storm panicked and went south, then it went farther west. I can no longer watch carnivores kill prey so I went inside.
I was sort of listening to a basketball playoff game and sort of pecking away on my keyboard. There was some distant thunder. Later there was some sprinkling on the roofs. We are used to wounded and dying storms dragging themselves to our county to die.
The sprinkling was consistent and prolonged. Lightning became more noticeable. Sprinkling turned to light rain. A short while later there was a boom and then real rain.
This was no wounded and dying storm, it was full of purpose and passion. Pacific moist air had travelled all the way across northern Mexico to Mason County, where it could turn into precipitation. We wound up with 2.9" rain.
I am aware that our most significant rains have come when we had little, and even no chance of their occurrence according to television and internet information.
James 4:4 says, "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
I keep looking to television and websites to provide rain. God provides rain. When human or artificial intelligence tells me what I want to hear, I believe them. God doesn't always tell me what I want to hear.
I spend too much time on the internet and watching television, if not to solve what I am worried about, to at least make me more comfortable and perhaps even happy.
Why am I waiting to be comfortable and happy with God until after I die? It is like I am putting what the world offers ahead of God, even though all that I enjoy and blesses me comes from him. In a way, that is like an adulteress, or adulterer.
I remember my grandparents frequent and anxious comments about rain. I remember the Radio weather reports in the 50s and 60s were a joke. They would get one or two weather reports a day and read them over and over. If a weather line came through mid-morning, and moved on, they would still repeat printout for the rest of the day that there was a chance of storms and rain when the sky was clear as a bell. Many times I thought to myself they could give a better weather report than what the government sent if they just looked at the sky and the horizons when they stepped outside the stations to smoke a cigarette.
My grandfather had been disappointed so many times by the government issued weather report that he could no longer listen to it being read over the radio. Older people as they got TVs in the 50s and 60s, watched it very little. National news was just 30 minutes a day and the only thing that my grandparents cared about were major weather events. Local weather was interesting to the extent that maps helped give movement of weather. Area highs and lows, as well as rainfall amounts were interesting to make the weather report a daily devotional in most homes.
Weatherpersons are like politicians, they lie a lot. Even so, we keep on reelecting the politicians and we keep on watching and reading the weather reports. As unfaithful as they are, and as misguided though it be, we keep putting our faith and trust in them.
We had good chances of rain last weekend. Each day hand a strong cloud build up. But we only got a trace amount.
I try to thank God for the blessings that the rains brought to those that had experienced them. But there is often anger and resentment in my heart, sometimes directed against myself, and sometimes directed against God. With more than a third of the year gone, total rainfall was just 3.2". It was when the chances were good and yet time after time we got no rain that my resentment was worse.
Yesterday the weather reports put our chances at between slim and none. As I drove back from Fredericksburg in 98 degree temperature, I noticed how anemic and feeble the cloud build up was. Drought is tiresome to one's spirit.
In west Texas, especially for older folks, watching it rain on someone else, is better than anything on TV. One can remember times when they were the ones receiving rain. Or they can hallucinate about experiencing rain themselves.
Yesterday evening we sat in our rockers on the front porch and watched one thundershower 30 miles to the west and one 50 miles to the east. The one to the east was beautiful reflecting the setting sunlight. It continued eastward where new moisture awaited that would keep it strong. The one to the west was like a herd animal who sees a predator and realizes it has strayed too far from the herd's safety. The storm panicked and went south, then it went farther west. I can no longer watch carnivores kill prey so I went inside.
I was sort of listening to a basketball playoff game and sort of pecking away on my keyboard. There was some distant thunder. Later there was some sprinkling on the roofs. We are used to wounded and dying storms dragging themselves to our county to die.
The sprinkling was consistent and prolonged. Lightning became more noticeable. Sprinkling turned to light rain. A short while later there was a boom and then real rain.
This was no wounded and dying storm, it was full of purpose and passion. Pacific moist air had travelled all the way across northern Mexico to Mason County, where it could turn into precipitation. We wound up with 2.9" rain.
I am aware that our most significant rains have come when we had little, and even no chance of their occurrence according to television and internet information.
James 4:4 says, "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
I keep looking to television and websites to provide rain. God provides rain. When human or artificial intelligence tells me what I want to hear, I believe them. God doesn't always tell me what I want to hear.
I spend too much time on the internet and watching television, if not to solve what I am worried about, to at least make me more comfortable and perhaps even happy.
Why am I waiting to be comfortable and happy with God until after I die? It is like I am putting what the world offers ahead of God, even though all that I enjoy and blesses me comes from him. In a way, that is like an adulteress, or adulterer.