Got Bounce?

"Wooh! Wooh!”

 Two breaths into my hands couldn’t chase the chill from my typing fingers this morning. Clicking an i-Phone outdoors without touch gloves is dicey, even as the sun vaporized snow and icicles. I just had to record God’s two-day glorious wintry landscape in the vast Hundred Acres of Southern Pine Woods.

Two nights ago my beloved hubby’s warm embrace led me out to our front porch. He tried to point out areas where snowflakes had stuck after a gray Eeyore kind of a day. He also tried to up my mood with a bouncy jiggle hug.

When one has PRK surgery done on an eye, one see lights twinkle like stars in the dark. The streetlight, though, cast a dim glow that couldn't bounce clarity into my photoreceptors.
I only determined that temperatures had flaked the precipitation when Southern Pine kids in PJ's couldn't dash out to
… stick out tongues to taste it,
… fall and flap up snow angels,
… mash up balls or men or forts. Sigh.

That day I kept tugging my parka sleeve to check my watch. “When will it come?” Rarely snowbound Southerners wondered, too.  School kids wandered about stores with their military or AFB-contracted moms or dads in tow. Folks up North would have Tigger-bounced for a regional-wide day off in the sweltering high thirties.

Forecasters reported that big snow would begin to fall around late morning, 10 at the earliest. The front dallied its freeze, hour after gray hour, until nightfall. That was fine for local commuters, but a nightmare for drivers on the ice rink interstates and roads north of us. As the Governor said in his apology, “The weather projections showed that it would not come our way.”

I learned that snow was projected to bear south of him at Saturday evening service. After opening praise, I spied Dave, the local TV weatherman, slip into a pew with his pretty wife. We missed being with them the two previous weekends they were sick. But in no way were this Midwest couple missed as he held open the main door as the congregation shuffled outside.

Frozen Falls

In jeans and a warm pullover, Dave beamed broader than a TV smile, as seasoned citizens opined loudly on the cold. One poked him in the chest and appeared to give him an earful.

He had just announced, “Canadian models strongly indicate snow on Tuesday in [our region].” His wife and I grinned over this prognostication. Bring it on!

We also grinned over the sermon, the best sermon I’ve heard from Pastor in the five years since we’ve moved here. Mind, Pastor writes good ones. This latest, “Gloom and Glory,” was the top of his top five for our family, even Buddy who heard it on delayed podcast. I link it here for the curious Poohs among us, and for those who, in gloom and doom, fix on their inner Eeyore.

Enjoy God’s weather artistry. Embrace cyclical climate change which the ancients called “seasons.” Hear Pastor B.  Join dear sisters and brothers in Jesus. Bounce and rejoice in God!

The people walking in darkness have see a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death
 a light has dawned.

You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy;

They rejoice before you as people rejoice a the harvest,

as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.

For as in the day of Midian's defeat,

you have shattered the yoke that burdens them;

the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.  

Isaiah 9:2-4, niv