Whether God

There has been a lot of discussion about praying for weather. Anthony Bush annually asks people to pray for sun for the harvest; Phil Williams for Skate or Surf Competitions. I sometimes find it hard to see how the various prayers can be rationalised but God seems to muddle through.

Yesterday a weather miracle took place. You may not have noticed.

Trendlewood Church had been invited to hold its morning service at the Nailsea Flower Show with the strict understanding that we could have speakers and musicians under cover but the congregation would need to be outside. In the event of adverse weather I had been told we had to return to our normal place of meeting, the school hall next door.

From about 4.30 a.m. I heard heavy showers followed by silence. When I woke and examined the skies it looked as if the day's weather would be hard to call. The BBC weather animation had a gap of three hours when there would be no rain between 1000 and 1300 so it looked as if we might be OK. We wanted to have our service at the show as a bit of a witness and a sales pitch. Trendlewood Church has no building and so it can be Nailsea's best kept secret.

At 9.00 the blue skies arrived and a band of clear sky was coming our way. It looked good. One of the organisers told us that it would be OK to move into the tent if it started to rain during the service. We opted for outdoors.

As I welcomed everyone and offered an introduction at 1015 the heavens opened. A band of black cloud anticipated to be missing us had other ideas. So we spent five minutes moving in to the marquee we had wanted to use all along. A good number of bystanders joined us and visitors to the show at the far end of the marquee could see and hear us.

I can't understand sometimes why there is hunger in the world if God is working on the micro scale of the weather over Nailsea's School field. What I can be sure of is that we got the exact weather we needed to do what we wanted and needed to do.

The organisers were happy and want us back next year. Result. To the sixty or so who came (almost double the corresponding Sunday last year) I offer grateful thanks.

Now. Can you remember the ten plagues of Egypt in order? I bet you can.