I Check The Forecast To Get Out Of It

You already know what it is going to say. That is the tell.

Somebody suggests going out, and before anybody has answered, the phone is in your hand and the little week of symbols is open, and you are looking at Thursday.

And the strange thing, if you catch yourself doing it, is the feeling in your chest when the symbol is a cloud with lines under it.

It is relief.

Not disappointment. Relief. And that is the whole subject of this article, because relief means the checking was never a question, it was a search, and you found what you went looking for, and now nobody has to do anything and it is not your fault.

I am not saying that to shame you. I am saying it because you already know it, and the knowing has been sitting there quietly making you feel like a fraud, and I would like to take that off you.

Ye can discern the face of the sky

There is a moment in Matthew where Jesus says something about weather that has almost nothing to do with weather.

He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? (Matthew 16:2-3, King James Version)

Ye can discern the face of the sky.

He is not criticizing their weather forecasting. It is good forecasting. He grants it entirely, and that is what makes the point land: the skill was never the problem, the use it was being put to was.

You are not being told your judgment is poor, and it was never the accuracy of the forecast that was in question. Matthew 16:3 grants the weather reading completely before saying anything else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a gentle thing rather than a sharp one.

And the word He uses is the difficult one, and I am not going to skate past it. But look at what it actually means in that sentence. Not liar. Somebody performing a part: reading the sky with great care while carefully not reading something else.

You have been very careful about one thing in order to avoid another, and it was never dishonesty that made a person do that. The written word names the avoidance and grants the skill in the same breath, and the Spirit of God is what keeps a woman from hearing this as an attack on her character.

What the checking is for

So let me say what I think is actually going on, because I think it is much more forgivable than it has been made out to be.

What is being looked for is permission not to do a hard thing.

The hard thing is not the walk. The hard thing is the doorway: the shoes, the asking, the possibility of a groan, and the twenty minutes of low grade managing that stand between an idea and a sidewalk.

That is genuinely hard, and nobody has ever handed out permission to find it hard, so the permission has been sourced somewhere else, and the weather app gives it away free of charge several times a week. The screen was never asked a real question, and a reason found on purpose is not the same as a reason.

You are allowed to find the door hard without needing a cloud to prove it, and it was never true that you needed an excuse to be tired. Matthew 16 grants the skill and points at what it is being used to avoid, which is exactly why the Spirit of God goes after the avoiding and never after the woman.

Put it face down

Here is the practical part, and it is physical and slightly silly, and it works because it removes the search rather than arguing with it.

Put the phone face down before anybody suggests anything.

Then go out for ten minutes without knowing. Actual not knowing. Walk out into whatever is there, having taken no advice from anybody.

You are able to go without the forecast, and it has never once been required in order to walk to the end of a street. The passage grants the reading of the sky and questions only what it is used for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman putting a phone down on a table.

And if it rains, you will find out the way people found out for four thousand years, which is by getting wet. Ten minutes. Then coats over a chair.

The reason it has to be ten minutes and not twenty is that ten minutes has no forecast in it. Nothing that could be looked up would change a ten minute decision, which means the checking has nothing to do and the search has nowhere to go.

You are able to choose a length that cannot be argued with, and it has never once been avoidance to make a decision smaller than the doubt. Matthew 16:3 puts the discerning in the right order without adding a single requirement, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on a damp street with somebody who did not look first.