Rain, Rain, Go Away
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
“Care, even when addressed to legitimate matters, if it is carried to excess, has in it the nature of sin.” – C.H. Spurgeon
Over the past 35 years, I have planned and coordinated dozens of golf tournaments, thousands of prison ministry trips, and hundreds of other sporting events that all had one thing in common: they were held outdoors. As such, I always prayed hard that God would bless us with sunshine and warm (not hot) temperatures.
Most of the time He answered those prayers in spectacular fashion. I still remember driving from Moorestown NJ to Camp Hill PA in the pouring rain, only to play two softball games in the prison there under sunny skies. As you may have guessed, it started raining again the minute we boarded our van for the trip home.
On another trip to SCI-Camp Hill, we weren’t so fortunate. No sooner had the umpire hollered “Play ball!” but the skies opened and soaked the field… and every player on it. For whatever reason, the recreation director allowed us to continue playing and so we did, slipping and sliding in ankle deep water. We played in even worse conditions a few years later at a prison in Roswell NM where the windswept rain pelted us in the face and the temperatures hovered in the low 50s. You talk about bone-chilling cold!
Then there was the golf tournament in New Jersey with 96 golfers playing in 96-degree temperatures… and softball games in Arizona, Michigan, Kentucky, and South Carolina where the thermometer topped out even higher. And did you know that it can get into the 20s in the Florida panhandle in February? Well, our basketball and softball teams found that out the hard way on more than one occasion!
The bottom line is that worrying about the weather is futile because it is out of our control. However, praying for good weather – and then leaving the matter in God’s hands – is a demonstration of faith.
Here is how Charles Spurgeon put it…
“The very essence of anxious care is imaging that we are wiser than God and putting ourselves in His place as if we could do for Him what He has undertaken to do for us. We attempt to think of things that we imagine Him forgetting; we work to take upon ourselves a heavy burden, as if He were unable or unwilling to take it for us.”
“Now this disobedience to His plain precept, this unbelief in His Word, this presumption that intrudes upon His province, is all sinful. But more than this, anxious care often leads to acts of sin. It we cannot calmly leave our affairs in God’s hand but attempt to carry our own burden, we will be tempted to use wrong means to help ourselves. This sin leads to a forsaking of God as our counselor and resorting to human wisdom.”
Tomorrow is our annual 100-Hole Golf Marathon, which raises sorely-needed money for our ministry in general and our Living H2O Initiative in particular. Since it takes all day – from 6:30 AM until 8:00 PM – to play 100 holes, we need God to bless us with lots of sunshine… and hopefully, warm temperatures and gentle breezes. But do you know what? I am going to try to follow my own advice and just pray (not worry) about it.
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Matthew 6:34 (NKJV)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
