The sunniest April since records began.

"From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praised!"

Psalm 113 verse 3

It is now official the meteorological office has confirmed what we knew in our hearts that Britain experienced the sunniest April since records began. From my observations the  result of this was really quite tangible: 

People were happy!

I often wonder who people who live in this beautiful land of privileges look so miserable. After all we have so much of everything. We may have gone through deep recession and the news is in itself down right depressing made worse by unrelenting media comment. The world is it seems in turmoil, everywhere we look there seems to be either massive accidents, violent power struggles, crimes of the grossest kinds, poverty and climate change. 

It may be a beautiful world but clearly something is desperately wrong! 

But there is hope through all of this, we could wax lyrical all day about the problems of this world and just make ourselves more depressed. I think that I will leave that to the BBC and the rest of the media moguls that make money out of the misery of whoever they can find that is in trouble. None of the media groupings will ever agree with me on this point but it is foundational and if dealt with this world of ours would be a far better place to live. 

Law and order is set in place to attempt to deal with man's problem but it is only able to address issues that have become offensive to society. We live in an age where we are told that we are entitled to our privileges which means in reality that all things are ok as long as we do not offend our fellow mankind. That all seems ok to a point but where is the standard set that tells what is offensive and what is not. For example it seems that some religions can commit the most violent crimes in the name of their god and be criticised as extremists but yet followers of Jesus can in the same news bulletin be castigated as evil people because they do not want to bake cakes containing messages that they find personally offensive. The rights and wrongs of this are open for your debate and are not the issue that I am concerned with.

My basic point is that the verse quoted above tells us that nature continues, day after day by God's good grace. The sun shines all over the world (maybe apart from the UK this May!), it shines on the good and the bad, the high and low in society. It shines on all shades of religion, political persuasion, sexual orientation, healthy or wealthy. In fact the sun shines everywhere but something fundamental has been forgotten.

The LORD's name is not praised as it ought to be! 

You may be wondering why I have deliberately capitalized the letters in writing LORD. There is a simple reason for that; a good bible translation will do so in verses similar to the one quoted. The reason for that is that the word used in the original language at this point was Yahweh which means the One and Only Almighty and All Powerful God. Therefore when we re-read our verse we find that God Almighty should be praised whenever the sun shines. You see the sun was created by Him and as the sun shines in it's brilliance it speaks powerful of God's wonders.

We had in the UK more sunshine this April than we have ever experience than ever before. Every day it spoke of the glory of God Almighty but did you praise His name when you saw it?

Perhaps we deserve the clouds and the storms that we are experiencing now!

If we are not inspired to praise God on sunny days, maybe God, who controls all of nature will find it necessary to call to Him out of the depression that cold, wet and windy spring das bring.

The glory of God is Jesus who came to deal; with the foundational problem of the world, the bible calls it sin and it is simply what we have been considering: It is not giving God the praise and glory that He deserves. Instead of looking to Him we look at man and his abilities and hence we have a world in absolute turmoil. 

Jesus is the answer for the world today
Above Him there's no other, Jesus is the way
Jesus is the answer for the world today
Above Him there's no other, Jesus is the way

If you have some questions
In the corners of your mind
And traces of discouragement
And peace you can not find

Reflection of the old past
They seem to face you every day
There's one thing I know for sure
That Jesus is the way

I know you got mountains
That you think you can not climb
I know that your skies have been dark
You think the sun won't shine
In case you don't know

I'm here to tell you
That the World of God is true, yeah
And everything that He's promised
I tell you He would do it for you
Let me tell you that

 Written by Michael W. Smith