They said it was the most remarkable winter in memory, and nobody cared if it was global warming. Then on February 21^st I flew to Atlanta for an overnight and Philadelphia got clobbered with snow. The flight home was canceled, and due to routine overbooking, the next available evacuation was Monday, three days hence.

I grumbled and then prayed, which is the usual sequence with me. A good measure of sanctification would be the amount of time elapsing between the two actions.

I had a cell phone but no charger. A business office in the main terminal of the city that is Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport sold cell phones and chargers. I asked the man if he could give me a charge, but he explained that he sells chargers, not charges.

I drew up a list of things to be grateful for. I noticed that some of the entries were taken from the list of things I had grumbled about: “Thank you, Lord, for canceling my flight — so that I won’t die in a plane crash.”

A woman sitting next to me in baggage claim directed my attention upward to a trail of ants, magnified about a billion times, coursing over the suspended heat duct. I asked her if it was “art.” She answered that she found it “disturbing.” She continued, “We have enough on our plate.”

I then asked if she was stuck here for a long time too. She said she expected so, unless she could come up with two dollars for a bus. I happened to have two dollars, so it worked out.

A fluke cancellation (make that one more item on the “grateful” list) and I was out of there in only 11 hours.

Cold enough finally to put on Spider’s coat.

I have seen 56 turnings of fall to winter, and roughly 20,000 risings and settings of the sun, and these are so regular as to seem on autopilot. But the regularity of the world is merely the faithfulness of God. If you see a night watchman who unfailingly makes his rounds, or a citizen who always pays his utility bill, you do not say he is on autopilot. You say he keeps his promises. What we call the “laws of nature” are nothing but descriptions, as best we can approximate, of the sovereignty of God.

When God performs a “miracle,” He is choosing to deviate from His regularity in a particular instance. It’s still all of God either way.

What’s the “so what?” factor in all this? (God’s truth is always relevant.) It is that God is always a God who is near me and not far away. What a sad man the Deist must be, to think that God is like a child who wound up a toy and then walked away bored. See the intimacy of our God’s involvement in our affairs:

“He sends out his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. He gives snow like wool; he scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He hurls down His crystals of ice like crumbs” (Psalm 147:15-17)

Okay, then, bring on the winter spectacle, my King! (238)