weatherinsouls

It's Fine To Watch The Weather As Long As We Monitor The 'Weather' Inside Of Us

While it's important -- even crucial -- to watch for signs of the times, and while the weather is part of that, we are not to be obsessed with it.

What is the temperature here -- or there? Are there clouds? Is it stormy? Has there been a tornado or even a hurricane of late?

Such is the great interest of our time and all well and good -- as long as we also watch for the weather inside.

What is the "weather" inside? It is our spiritual condition. It is whether we are stormy or calm.

Are there clouds in our spirits? Are we depressed, or angered? Do we lack love? Is it cool inside of us -- or even frigid? Has ice begun to form? Are we so cold that a part of us is frozen?

That's certainly the best of conditions. We all like a warm day. We prefer warm to any other temperature.

That can be as bad as cold because when we are hot we may be lustful, angry, or overly passionate.

Heat can scorch. It can burn. And so we have to watch the "weather inside" to make sure that it doesn't tend to too much heat.

Heat causes wind and wind can cause destruction. A strong breeze may whirl into a storm. Or, forces may combine. In nature, too much coolness hitting against too much heat can spawn a tornado. And so we ask: do we have a sultry breeze inside, or does the wind we generate tend toward anxiety (and even destruction)?

What is coming out of us? Is there an atmosphere in which one can breathe readily -- or is our interior "atmosphere" humid and thick? Is there a fog that blinds us?

These are all metaphors and bring up our major point: the climate of the soul is a good climate only when it is the climate of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.

Meditate on that -- and control your "thermostat" with a simple reading from Corinthians:

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal," it says in Chapter 13. "If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

"And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

"Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.

"For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

"But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love."

01/05/07