God is playing April Fools

We scanned the bopping sea for children from our car in the elementary school pick up line.  We were looking for my niece who would be dawning a puffy yellow jacket.  She would come out first, followed shortly by my 2^nd grade son.  They both would join my preschool age daughter already in the backseat.

My niece began the conversation with an exclamation about the weather.  “God and Jesus played an April Fools trick by making it snow today!”  It had indeed been a strange day when, in Middle Tennessee, snow flurries came in waves throughout the morning and afternoon landing awkwardly on the blooming trees in late March.

To her delight, the kindergarten comment provoked instant reaction from the other two and what ensued was a theological conversation about what God can and cannot do and what He does and does not do.  I found myself both amused and humbled.

“God doesn’t make it snow.”
“Yes He does.”
“Well, He doesn’t play tricks.”
Well sometimes he likes to be silly the way we like to be silly sometimes.”

Elementary theology abounded, from the mouths of children and in my own head.  The simplicity of their ideas about who God is and what He is like amused me as I listened to the backseat banter..  At the same time a profound sense of humility swept over me as I began to realize that I was not sure I had much more of a clue about God’s role in the frozen precipitation.

I have been on staff at a church for over 16 years.  I hold a Masters of Divinity, the title of which is itself an oxymoron.  And that’s just it.  We don’t master divinity.  We don’t have God figured out.

Had God made it snow on a day when it seemed unnatural?  Surely God can control the weather.  Old and New Testament examples abound.  But does He always control the weather as if no weather event, rain or shine happens outside of His specific will?  Was there some reason that it snowed or did He just allow it to happen?  The implications of questions like these reach far beyond musings about the weather.  And I don’t have that all figured out.

But perhaps this is precisely the point.  A snowy day in late March serves to humble us.  It reminds us that we don’t know it all.  That we have far less ability to control or predict what will happen next than we often assume.  That sometimes we are no more sophisticated than an elementary age child in the backseat.  And that while God is small enough to be very near, He is paradoxically not small enough for our inspection.  He doesn’t fit into our categories.  He doesn’t always do what we expect.

And yet…

As the green sticky note on my desk reads now in fading pencil marks…”I will not let what I do not understand take away from what I do understand!”

May God grant us the grace to live in light of who He is even, and especially, in those times when we don’t have Him all figured out.  May we be like children in His backseat with wonder and excitement as the snow falls on a day in late March.