Superlative Deviation: Life With Meaning, Life With Joy

  So many people have difficulty with faith or even believing that Heaven and God are real. Others struggle to stay positive these days and find a happy balance between being the better change and not allowing the world to affect them. We all have times of feeling alone or lost. Perhaps this little story will help raise some spirits.

  As springtime was in full swing, the usual tornado warnings reared their ugly/annoying heads. One day, I was at home and heard the sirens got off. The weather station was forecasting a chance of hail, too; and the warnings were in affect for at least an hour (if I recall correctly). They had spotted some cloud rotation, and as always, people went into a mild panic. You’d think people in the Midwest would always be prepared for things like this, but they never seem to be – not anymore.

 I grew up in a household with a former meteorologist. Even at an early age, I picked up tidbits of information by default. I also learned very basic weather reading skills in grade school science, not just technical names and cloud formations. One of the things my parents taught me was that if you want to know what’s going to happen, don’t look to the weather channel. Look to nature, especially the animals. They will always tell you when something’s wrong and are often more reliable.

  Cloud rotation doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Hail warnings don’t necessarily mean anything. Take a look at the animals, both wild and domestic. They either close up their burrows or flee the area long before humans even think to check the weather. If a bad storm is on the way, they know to protect themselves. Even the insects will vanish. If it’s a tornado that’s coming or any storm that would wreck serious havoc, the area will be filled with the most eerie silence you’ll ever hear in your life. There will be nothing and no one around for miles. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban environment or not. You’ll have more distractions from humans there, but you can still check the sky, your neighborhood, and your pets. Compare what the experts are saying to what’s actually happening. Go outside, walk around, watch, and listen. This is how the Creator made His creation. If the wildlife vanishes, that’s when you take cover.

  So when those sirens went off that day and everyone around me was anxious, I chose to put those old skills to use again. I went out on the balcony, scanned the yard, and checked the skies. What did I find? That everything was perfectly normal. The birds were singing. Neighborhood squirrels were asking me to put out more food for them, and one was even playing in a rain puddle. A couple of the smaller bugs clung to the screen door, but the larger ones were still flying around. This told me the rain wouldn’t get much heavier and the wind wouldn’t be strong enough to disturb them. When I went back inside, our feline friend, Louie – one of our neighbor’s cats who befriended us shortly after moving in – was napping on his favorite chair, completely unphased by the racket of the sirens. Needless to say, if trouble had been brewing, he wouldn’t just lay there.

Sure enough, nothing happened. No tornado, no high winds, no hail, no severe storm. The sun came out after only a few minutes. Louie woke up, ate his lunch, and went to play in the grass. I said thank you to the Heavens for taking care of those below and for showing me again that we’re all in this this together and need to take care of each other. Then I went back to my book.

So yes, God knows knows what you’re going through. How can He not? Of course, He hears you. How can He not? And He always sends an answer. How can He not? Our problem is we’ve been conditioned not to listen, and when we try to listen, we feel we don’t know how. Why? Because we were never taught. We were taught to listen to what other people say, forgetting that everybody’s only human and can only repeat what they were told by somebody who only knew what they were told, etc. – just like when we rely on weather reports without checking them against what we can see for ourselves. After all, those folks are supposed to be the experts; but can anyone really be an expert at something that is constantly changing and being changed? In fact, more and more of the reports I see sound like they’re computer-generated, not human-generated. This is just my observation and opinion, though.

Sadly, many of us have unknowingly and unintentionally allowed our egos to block us, too (speaking from personal experience). Ego comes in many forms besides the most overt versions that are readily recognized. We’re so focused on getting answers and doing “stuff”, we don’t even want to admit we need help, guidance, support, training – whatever the case may be. We won’t humble ourselves and do the work we need to do on our end to make things better. We won’t acknowledge that we don’t really know as much as we though we did. This is another thing that leads us to feel that Heaven isn’t listening and doesn’t care. Nothing could be further from the truth. After all, look what They made: birds that sing, cats that snooze, and squirrels that play in the rain.

• E.W.

(photo found online, original source unknown)