Oh, Baby It's Cold Outside!

“Oh, the weather outside is frightful,

But the fire is so delightful.

And since we’ve no place to go,

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”

I was on my way to work yesterday morning, grateful for a working heater in my pickup. The thermometer registered a brisk thirty-six degrees – though not freezing, it’s still cold. The sun was out, the clouds were sparse, and from the cab of my truck, it seemed to be a warm day outside. Amazing.

I thought of how the day is slow to heat up, usually hitting its peak between three and six o’clock in the afternoon. As the day gives way to darkness, the temperature drops, and the only source of heat is what rises from the earth.

Then there’s the wind factor. A cold day can actually be comfortable if the wind isn’t blowing. On the other hand, a strong wind on even a cool day can seem to slice through your jacket. The dead of winter in the dead of night is absolute with strong winds pounding the earth and all that rests on its surface.

In that moment, I thanked God for my heater, my jacket, and my pickup.

I don’t really think about how cold it is outside until I have to go out into it; and the colder it is, I’m less apt to go out.

I get to the church parking lot, pause, then open my pickup door, feeling the wind outside roughly slide across my face and through the gaps in my coat around my collar and cuffs. I get out of my pickup, grab my bag and move quickly toward the front door. Once inside, I shake the cold off like a menacing gremlin, appreciating the building that keeps the outdoor climate conditions at bay.

I walk back to my office, turning up the thermostat a little bit as I walk past.

Human nature, I think, tends to like to stay where it’s comfortable. Minnesota homes don’t usually have air conditioning, did you know that? When it’s too cold, we complain. When it’s too hot, we complain.

And I should clarify the word ‘we’. A lot of speakers and writers use the word ‘we’ more with the definition of ‘you guys’, and I don’t want there to be any question that I do bunch myself into the whole ‘we’ crowd.

It’s just my opinion, but I think we are comfort driven to a fault, choosing our own comfortability over the needs of others. It’s easier to stay in our nest; it’s more work to get up and out and over to… someplace that’s not comfortable.

My mother used to like her house to be cold; around 65 in the summer, with the ceiling fans on high. When we would go visit, we could see our breath as we tried to sleep at night next to the sides of beef hanging from the ceiling. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration.

And don’t you dare touch the thermostat without permission. Man, you’re just asking for a verbal ruler across your knuckles.

We protect our comfort zone as well. We train our bodies to require a small window of variance, mostly somewhere between 65 and 78 degrees in order to be physically comfortable. Any more or less, and we’re sweating or shivering.

My boss, whose wife is a pediatrician, was telling me yesterday about how he’s heard many middle-of-the-night phone conversations between his wife and the parent of one of her patients, which would go something like this: “Her temperature is what?... 104?... Yes, that is warm, but fever alone isn’t something to worry about. That’s how the body fights infection. Give her Tylenol and maybe a lukewarm bath in order to make her comfortable. Now how much does she weigh?...”

Can you imagine what life would be like if the sun’s heat wasn’t as hot as it is, even by five degrees?

Or, what if the earth stopped in mid-rotation for an entire day, say, on the other side of where we are? They would get an extra day of heat, while we sit in darkness, the cold getting deeper.

That’s what happened in Joshua 10. Joshua asked for home court advantage over the enemies of the Israelites by stopping the sun, and the LORD did just that.

But what if God shut the sun off for a while? Just pretend there wouldn’t be any global ramifications for a moment. By not having a sun, it would be dark and cold outside. No sun means no light, which means confusion. No sun means we’d stay close to what ever means of heat and light that could be found and maintained.

In a sense, God did shut off the sun for the Israelites. Coming into Advent, we remember the coming of the Christ child, and celebrate in the promise of the Second Coming.

The word ‘coming’ has an understood word attached to it – ‘back’.

The coming ‘back’ of God happened through the birth of a baby.

The ‘coming back’ of God was the beginning of the end of darkness and cold.

The ‘coming back’ of God was the beginning of the redemption of all who call Him LORD, the reclamation of His people, the re-instatement of the Holy Nation, whose citizenship is now open to all who confess Him as Savior and King.

As Christmas is coming, I hope to spread joy, sharing Christ with as many as possible. I do not wish to be one of the ‘we’ that is referred to in James 2:16: “If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?”

I want to say, “Hey, why don’t you come in out of the cold?”