Springtime?

It's been seventy degrees here for the last two days, and beautiful and sunny. It feels like summer, or at least spring. At any rate, it doesn't feel like barely the middle of January. Funny how much I talk about the weather - it was a habit I picked up in Chicago, where the weather was everyone's favorite topic (next to baseball). Weather in Chicago is Shakespearean. It can be pretty amazing to witness.

The last time I was in Chicago, several months ago, it was pouring rain, a kind of rain you never see in California, where it looks like Someone up in the sky has just upended many, many buckets of water. It was a bad day. I was there for work, at a time when I was already thinking of leaving my job. I was stressed and tired, and, thanks to the weather, also soaking wet, as wet as if I'd just come out of a shower fully dressed. And it was cold. Because I was there for work, I wasn't bundled up the way I would have been had I been wearing my "civilian" clothes. I was blocks from my hotel, and the rain didn't look like it was going to let up any time soon. In short, I was miserable.

But God reaches out and touches you when you least expect, and sometimes in small ways that mean the world at the time. Some random man started walking toward me, where I was huddled under a small awning. I immediately tensed and put my city face on, willing him to leave me alone. He was carrying the world's biggest umbrella, and he held it out to me as he came up. "Here," he said. "Take it. I have another one in my office, and this is my building."

That umbrella got me back to my hotel. I still have it, in my hall closet. Every time I look at it, I remember all the many, many ways God has looked after me.