How's the Weather?

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You’ve probably noticed that when people get together, one of the first things that usually comes up in conversation is the weather (unless you live in Alabama, and then it's football...). The conversation might begin something like this: “Can you believe this weather we’ve been having? I can’t remember a [colder, hotter, wetter, drier, etc.] one in the last twenty years"…and so on and so forth.  Most of us in these kinds of conversations are just stating the obvious, and probably, if we were honest, most of us could really care less. We’re all in the same boat, and mere conversation certainly won’t change the weather—for good or bad.  So why do we spend so much time talking about the inane or the obvious and so little time talking about what matters most? Probably because it is so easy—no thought or effort is required to make these kinds of comments in passing. I thought about this today as I was reading in Luke 12:54-56. In this little section of his teaching, Jesus was speaking to the crowds about the tough subject of division among men because of him, and he made the following comments:
When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “A shower is coming,” and so it turns out. And when you see a south wind blowing you say,  “It will be a hot day,” and it turns out that way. You hypocrites! You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time?
Reading Jesus’ admonishment to the people he walked around with and the crowds who followed him around made me think about how much time I spend on conversations that really don’t matter a hill of beans. We all want to communicate with each other, and we want to please each other, and we get caught up in the moment of catching up with each other and forget that this life is just a blip on the eternal radar. Jesus urges us to look and see the spiritual condition of the time in which we live. He urges us to see our own spiritual conditions, and he urges us to see how brief the time is for us to work to bring in His harvest--even though it is often uncomfortable to have these conversations. So can we move past the weather forecast to a more spiritual one of eternal value? How's the spiritual atmosphere where you are?

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