These columns are hard to time just right because my deadline is a week or so before the printed copy reaches your hand. I see you are most likely reading this around or near the end of February. Wi February and March can be very tricky weather wise. Spring can be popping out all over or winter’s fury could be making one last blast raging against the warmth. I am thinking about lions and lambs today because of the old adage that blasts preceded and followed by 45 degree weather.  

What a good southern boy like me to do?  I am kind of glad in some ways that I don’t have a garden plot here in WI I would surely mess up and plant way to early and then run myself ragged trying to save my plants from freezing. But the weather is a great illustration of life, we never really know how things are gonna’ turn out! Joys and celebrations sometimes turn quickly into challenges and laments. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, 

  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Matt5:45 KJV

Through it all Jesus has promised not that everything will be perfect but that he will be with us through it all! I suppose how we deal with those  stormy times is the question we need to ask ourselves. We cannot often control those storms that arise in our lives, usually things we could do to curtail challenges happen way to early in the process for us to take advantage of them to avert those down times. But while  we can’t  always control what happens to us, we can control how we react.  

Lion or a lamb we are still here, we are present, and we know that we can count on Christ to see us through. Even when our faith is challenged we have our faith families to hold us up, to believe deeply for us when times are hard for us. 

I pray as you read this you are weathering the storms of life, and that you can feel the presence of the creator God in your surroundings, hear Gods words in conversations and feel God’s touch as you walk through this and all seasons! Amen 

He is with us Imanuel! 

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Lance Smith is pastor at Zwingli United Church of Christ in Monticello.