CONCERNING CLIMATE CHANGE

God spoke to me in the Czech language this morning. Yes, He did.

 I just awakened and wanted to hurry and remember something that I thought of during the night. I found pen and paper and looked for something substantial to put underneath the paper as I wrote. I pulled a book from my bookcase at random. The adjoining picture is the front cover of that book.

It was a book in Czech for children to learn about the months of the year and the changing of the seasons in little poetic couplets that rhyme at the end of both lines. I can read and speak Czech at about the kids' level since it was my first language growing up in Iowa. My beloved Czech grandmother, Frantiska, who didn't speak any English, cared for me from my infancy at home while my parents were both at work. Translated, the title of the book means: “Whether the climate is hot or cold, on earth everything gives us joy.” (Phone me 540-877-1813 and I'll read it to you in Czech!)

Wow! I thought. That little rhyme packs a monster truth with some underlying principles that apply to the climate change controversy, also to my life attitude under all circumstances of life. The entire international dispute about climate change could well follow the principle of subsidiarity: “Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled and problems solved by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority.”

Why get bent out of shape to worry about who or what is the source of change in climate over the millennia of time? History and even pre-history shows us that there have always been changes: catastrophic and minor, sudden and gradual over centuries and decades, even in our lifetimes. Everything in creation changes. It is a built-in earth principle. Human beings have to go with the flow. 

In times past, man didn't have the capability to alter either his immediate environment or the atmosphere at large or even his personal comfort zone–other than putting on heavy clothing during freezing weather or shedding his clothes in the heat.

 Now he is able to climate control his habitat “whether hot or cold” with a thermostat.

More all-encompassing than that, man is now capable of releasing energy by rearrangement of atomic nuclei through nuclear fission or fusion to destroy himself and all mankind and in the process not only pollute and irreparably contaminate his immediate environment and the earth's atmosphere in dangerous ways previously unimagined.

Isn't climate change on earth ultimately vested in God as the “Central Authority?”

Isn't it best that we leave it to Him while we first “take it at a local level” to do what we can ourselves? We are “the smallest, lowest competent authority.” Let's do our share and our personal best. 

Beyond that, taking it even more personally and intimately, there is a secondary meaning to the word “atmosphere.” It refers to “one's dominant mood or emotional tone.” We also have a thermostat for that which is well within our ability to control through our free will. We can have our own “climate change” at any time through our attitude that can transcend our immediate environment or circumstances—whether hot or cold, rain or shine, whether adversity or success, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want. “On earth 'vse' EVERYTHING 'tesi' nas—gives us joy.” Or as James in 1:2 counsels, “if we encounter various trials, consider it all joy.”

Guess what? I forgot what I originally wanted to remember to write down this morning because God spoke so loudly and clearly to me about my own responsibility for “climate control” through that pithy little Czech couplet. I get it: All joy! Regardless of what is going down in my life these days, I'm in charge of my thermostat, my “dominant mood and emotional tone.”