Heat Wave

The UK is now facing a heat wave and Monday is forecast to have the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the UK! I’m recording this on Tuesday, and part of me wonders whether it’s actually going to be pouring with rain when it goes out on Thursday! 

It’s quite funny, looking at how brits respond to the heat – I expect to see many people with sunburn in the coming weeks, and freezer compartments in supermarkets may well face an ice lolly shortage. They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, so I can imagine we’re not about to start having siestas any time soon! 

And we also love a good complain don’t we, we brits! It’s too cold, it’s too wet, it’s too hot! Never happy really are we? But it’s strange I think, how the sun is always in the sky, always burning, but the temperature that we experience here on earth differs so massively depending on how close or far away we are from it. It’s not as if the sun is changing, it’s that our planet is moving. And as the earth moves even just a tiny bit closer to the sun on its oval orbit, just that little tilt of the axis means that we get the seasons, and heat waves like we’re having now. 

It makes you think doesn’t it – how hot must the sun be! We can’t get too close to it, or we’d be burnt up! See, we can enjoy the sun now, from a distance, but if we get too close, the sun’s power becomes dangerous! 

And actually the Bible says that God is like that. “His splendour was like the sunrise, rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden.” God is like the sun! If we get too close to him, it’s dangerous! That’s why when Moses saw God in the burning bush, he was terrified! 

So my question for you this morning is this – do you think of God like this? Or do you think of him as soft and cuddly? Because we can’t get too close to God – except through Jesus. We’re not worthy, but if we trust in Jesus, he can bring us close to God so we can know him without being burnt up. 

Next time you feel the sun’s heat, remember that God is so much more powerful than the sun – but if we trust in Jesus, we can know him personally. 

I’ll leave you with a song about the weather – here’s Heat Waves by Glass Animals

Matt Gurtler 14/7/22