Weathering the (Melbourne) Weather
I don’t like being cold.
So when we went to Mt. Buller a few weeks ago on a mini-getaway, while Roy taught Micah how to ski I was pretty miserable.
The wind blew the snow into our faces and Joshua and I decided to find shelter indoors.
Even though it’s September the weather in Melbourne is still dismally cold and rainy. It’s enough to make optimists wonder, “Will spring come again?”
We Melbournians like to joke that there are four seasons in one day in Melbourne – but as far as I can tell these days, it’s just winter.
It’s amazing to me that someone looked at all the snow and cold and thought, “Hey, let’s make a game out of this!” and invented skis … and ice skates … and snowboards … and toboggans (my new favourite word – so much cooler than “sled”) – so that they could stay out in the cold even longer and enjoy the frigid temperatures.
I guess when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and when life gives you winter, you make … winter sports.
It reminds me of a children’s rhyme:
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot.
We’ll weather the weather,
Whatever the weather,
We’ll weather it,
Like it or not!
It also reminds me of Paul, the convert to Christianity who became its greatest advocate – he truly received every circumstance and made the most of it; he sang when he was imprisoned (Acts 16:25) and he gave thanks when he was weak, sick, insulted, distressed (2 Corinthians 12:10).
He said, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).
Not all of us are like Paul – some of us don’t want to speed downhill on treacherously slippery snow to our deaths strapped onto what look like torture devices and actually pay someone a lot of money to do so. Some of us don’t want to praise when we’re sick or hurting.
But perhaps we can toboggan on a gentle slope and actually enjoy it. Or pray through the difficulty and find peace. Or cry with a friend and actually feel better through the shared vulnerability and rawness.
So while I’d still like the weather to be continuously fine, at least there are ways to weather the seasons of life – through connecting with God and others, we may even learn to be content.
by: Jinha Kim
"But those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14