Interlude

February 2, 2007

Xanga-Matt

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Before I get to part two of my post, which will close the threads I started in part one, I thought I’d take an interlude of sorts. A bit of a background first: At work, I’m responsible for writing a weekly email newsletter that goes out every Thursday. It covers what’s going on at the church, any events that people might be interested in, etc. I’ve recently started to open each e-letter with ruminations, sentiments, or thoughts that were on my heart that week. It’s pretty cool to have an audience of 300+ people reading (usually) what you’ve written every week. Yesterday, I wrote about Groundhog Day, and since today’s the actual day, I thought it’d be appropriate to share it on here. By the way, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this year. Let’s hope it turns out to be true!

Here goes:

Today marks the first day
of February, and boy, does it feel like it with the bone-chilling cold
weather outside. Tomorrow we’re supposed to find out if we’re going
to have six more weeks of winter or not thanks to Punxsutawney Phil.

I thought it’d be fun to share a couple
of tidbits about Groundhog Day that you may not be aware of.

The celebration of Groundhog
Day began with Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers. They brought with
them the legend of Candlemas Day, which states, “For as the sun
shines on Candlemas Day, so far will the snow swirl in May…”

Punxsutawney held its first Groundhog Day in the 1800s. The first
official trek to Gobbler’s Knob was made on February 2, 1887.

So the story goes, Punxsutawney Phil was named after King Phillip.
Prior to being called Phil, he was called Brer Groundhog.

These
tidbits come straight from the official site of Punxsutawney’s Groundhog
Club at www.groundhog.org.




Now, of course, this is all done in good fun. Farmers, weathermen, and
other people whose jobs depend on the weather are not going to put their
full faith of what’s going to happen weather-wise on a groundhog named
Punxsutawney Phil, no matter how cute he may be.


But we CAN and DO put our full faith on Jesus
when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)



We take that seriously because the understanding and acceptance of that
verse is always spot-on in forecasting the internal weather of our hearts.
Are we cold, frigid to the touch, unwilling to move? Are we windy, always
blowing people down as we go through our lives? Or are we warm, blooming
in the love of Christ?



Tomorrow, when the groundhog crawls out of his burrow and makes his
prediction, I challenge you to look at what your heart
is forecasting. Unlike the weather outside, you CAN change your heart’s
weather.



I hope and pray it’s not another six weeks of winter.

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