Let’s Talk About Central New York Weather

A good friend once said that you have to have a sadistic\masochist personality problem to live in Central New York, and I think it is true.

This is what we do in Central New York

The sun is an odd phenomenon in Central New York, though it does shine from time to time. Yes, it does! It is very cloudy here – one of the cloudiest cities in the country. And then there is the snow: lots of it. It blows off Lake Ontario, that great snow maker, in wide bands that pummel vast areas, whereas just outside the band it can be clear. That’s Central New York. Or we get huge storms that blanket everything in ungodly inches and inches (and feet and feet) of snow. And if its not clouds or snow, then its rain, sometimes for days upon days, making you wonder if its time to build a second ark.

I often tell people Central New York is a great place as long as you don’t mind shoveling snow. It really is. To the north is the Thousand Islands, to the North East the Adirondacks, to the South the Finger Lakes, West is Niagara Falls and East the Catskills. What’s not to like? We are in the center of the entire North East – think about that, all you CNY haters! One great highway, route 81, runs North-South from Canada to Florida, and the other, I-90, from Boston to Seattle. Where they meet, you have CNY!

Then there are the seasons. There are four of them here, and very distinct: Winter, Spring, Fall and Summer. Winter seems to always last forever, but spring is gorgeous after living an Eskimo life, and the Summer can get hot – very hot – but not like the blast furnace known as the South. Everyone I know likes Fall the best, with its cool evenings and crimson leaves, falling from the trees that steadily become more and more bare. I’ve heard of people who moved to a seasonally anemic place like Florida and moved back, not able to take the relative sameness of the seasons year after year. I can understand it.

There’s another good thing about Central New York: it’s stable. That’s a good thing. I hear about hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and avalanches and forest fires and tsunamis and all such very bad natural disasters in other places, and we have none of them in Central New York. Not even one very bad weather event happens here. My house is safe; imagine not knowing if your roof will be on the next season, or if shifting ground will destroy your foundation. None of such worries are found in the brains of Central New York homeowners. We do, it seems, amortize the weather disaster over many years, in fierce snow storms every season and endless back-breaking shoveling of that snow. A win for us, overall? I think so.

So pity us poor Central New Yorkers who have opted to live in this hellish climate, and what does that say about us? But when your home is destroyed in some freak natural disaster, we will pity you, and will yank once again on the Snow Blower Cord and listen to it rumble to life, after yet another six inches of that white stuff has fallen.

Wormwood and World Events

After a tumultuous election season in the United States, we had a winner: Donald Trump, the Donald. The world will never be the same – or at least the US!

It is interesting to take a look at what happened from 30,000 feet, as it were. Having been so engrossed in the campaign and the transition after it, it’s easy to lose perspective about what we are really doing or what is going on. As always, scripture should be our guide, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.

Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; 

they are regarded as dust on the scales 

Isaiah 40:15

This is sobering. It seems so important who is the next Secretary of State, or whether the English choose Brexit or not (which they did), or what Putin is doing in Syria now, and then there’s Castro dying and the Philippines turning away from the U.S., and how will Trump actually govern (?), and on and on it goes.

It’s easy to get sucked into all these important events; the news channels shout the news on every street corner, and what gets whispered in the ear in one country is blared on the news in another. The talking heads on the news channels analyze these very important events to death, and the news cartels report 24/7 on it all over and over and over, just in case you missed something.

But according to God’s Word, none of it really matters. Nothing. Take a bucket out and, using an eyedropper, release a single drop into it. That is how much to God it matters. Sand is the same: one grain on a scale, and the scale does not tip – not even a bit; that is how important it really is.

God cares about hearts and saving those hearts, 100 percent. That is what He is interested in. If this world followed God’s mind, then out of every hour of programming, only a minute would be devoted to the affairs of nations. Maybe not even a minute. Perhaps a few seconds, or less.

I think we have put the news cycle into perspective. Now our hearts have to follow.