Praise God For Heat (February 4, 2007)

Has your heater been working during this bitter cold snap? Give thanks to God.

Yesterday I got my ailing furnace replaced, and today for the first
time in a while my indoor temperature has crept into the 60s, and I
can walk around my duplex without having to wear layers of
sweatshirts. It feels nice! Thank God for heat.

In the Bible, cold is always bad. Jacob complained about cold working conditions to his boss Laban: "This was my situation: The heat consumed me in the daytime and the cold at night, and sleep fled from my eyes." (Genesis 31:40). Job saw cold as one of the sufferings of the oppressed: "Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked; they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold." (Job 24:7). James indicts people who say to the cold and hungry, "Keep warm and well fed!" but who don't give them a meal or a blanket (James 2:15-16).

Several Bible heroes (in addition to Jacob) suffered from the cold. 1
Kings 1:1: "When King David was old and well advanced in years, he
could not keep warm, even when they put covers over him." (1 Kings
1:1). Pity poor Paul: in 2 Corinthians 11:27 he wrote, "I have labored
and toiled and often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and
thirst,...I have been cold and naked" - and about 12 years later,
imprisoned in Rome, he was still cold! In 2 Timothy 4:13 he asked
Timothy to bring with him the coat he left at Troas.

Jesus probably shivered on the night before his crucifixion. In John
18:18 we read, "It was cold, and the servants and officials stood
around a fire they had made to keep warm." Stripped for a beating,
Jesus stood nowhere near that fire.

But I'm warm pretty much whenever I want to be. Just as I have only known hunger from dieting, so have I also only known cold as a temporary inconvenience. In this I am more privileged than the patriarchs, the apostles and the King of kings. Is it the same for you? Are any of your toes frostbitten? Do you read these words huddled
in a fetal position, desperately trying to retain your body's heat? If not, give thanks. It is by God's grace that your metabolism keeps you at a comfy 98.6 and your furnace heats the air around you to near 70. That is a stunning degree of luxury for a people as foolish as we are to live this close to the Arctic Circle. Be grateful for the glory of heat.