What Do You Think of This Weather?By
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It’s the quintessential smalltalk question. “What do you think of this weather?” In Oregon, where I live, the weather lately has been pretty interesting. It’s mid-June and we’re still having temperatures like February. It’s certainly not uncommon for June in Oregon to be rainy, but it’s definitely strange for it to also be cold.
I have diabetes. I got up early Sunday morning with a full bladder. I forgot that I had left my truck’s power converter on the floor. It is heavy, metal, and full of sharp edges. I stepped right on it and tore up the bottoms and insides of a couple of toes. For those who don’t know it, a foot injury for a diabetic is not to be taken lightly. It can quickly turn very serious if not attended seen by a physician and verified to not be infected.
I called my doctor’s office. The doctor on call advised that I stay off of it for a day or two and call if the area around it turned red. Other than my blood, it looked normal. Monday evening it looked pretty red and it hurt to touch it. I made an appointment for the next morning, yesterday.
My doctor examined it and said it was fine so far, but to still be on guard for signs of infection. He also noticed in my computer chart that I was due to have my A1C tested. The A1C is a measure of my glucose levels as an average over about 3 months. A low number is healthy.
I was sitting there in the examination room waiting for the nurse to come in. The door opened up and a different nurse entered. My regular nurse came in after her. The first woman said, “I’ve got it.” The second thank her. They were obviously very busy.
The first thing the nurse said to me as she sat the tray down was, “What do you think of this weather?”
“Makes me wonder just how valid this global warming stuff is,” I replied.
She said, “You know, that’s a good thing you said right there. I’ve been praying and asking God to teach me about the signs. We’re certainly living in the days before the Lord’s return.”
I figured out that when she says she’s been praying, she doesn’t mean her prayers this morning when she got up. She means that right then and there, she had been praying while talking to me.
Suddenly, I recognized her. I had forgotten about this particular nurse. The last time she attended to me, she grabbed my hands and prayed for me before leaving me to get an x-ray. That time, she said that she had been praying too.
Both times, she had been praying to know what to say. She said, “I’m getting that God wants you to open your mouth and speak the truth.” The time before, she said that God had an important work for me to do among the nations and that I needed to get ready for it.
Now, my tendency in this kind of a situation is to chalk it up to religious zeal, but I can’t deny how very close she is to my own patriarchal blessing, which I won’t quote here. It’s just that I can’t avoid the connection in my mind.
I don’t know about any impending work among the nations. I can’t even afford to go downtown right now. I do know that the Lord wants me to open my mouth and I think it’s a given that when we do open our mouths, God wants us to speak the truth. The problem is, I’m fairly mixed up about the truth most of the time.
So, in the spirit of the nurse’s prophecy and other things that I’ve been told, I do know one thing I’m not mixed up about. Jesus lives and loves me. He blesses my life every day. His atonement has made possible for me the remission of my sins for the sake of the world to come and has made possible for me the obedience to his commandments in the world right now. He offers freely this love to all. May we all accept it.
