The Weather and the News Before My Boots

Two things get looked at before the boots go on, and both of them are reasonable.

The weather, because there is work outside and it matters. And the headlines, because a person likes to know what the world did overnight.

Neither of those is a vice. I am not going to stand here and tell a man he should not know whether it is going to rain on him.

But I have been thinking about the order, and about what those two things do that nobody counts.

They set a temperature.

By the time the boots are on, a mood has been established. If the forecast is bad, there is a low grade bracing. If the news is bad, and it generally is, there is a heaviness that does not have a name and does not belong to anything in the day itself. Neither of those came from your life. Both of them arrived from somewhere else and got in early, and by seven they are indistinguishable from how you feel.

That is the thing worth noticing. Not that the information is bad. That it was first.

A line that is a decision

Psalm 118 has a line everybody knows and almost nobody reads as what it is.

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)

Read the second half. We will.

That is not a description of a mood. It is a decision announced in advance about a day whose contents are not yet known. He is not saying this day turned out well and therefore we are glad. He is saying we will rejoice, which is a thing a person can only say before the results are in.

And look at the first half, which is the ground it stands on. This is the day which the Lord hath made. The claim is about who made it, not about how it goes.

So the psalm gives a person a first sentence about a day that is grounded in something that cannot be revised by a forecast.

You are permitted to set the temperature of a day yourself, and it was never the news that had the right to. Psalm 118:24 states a decision about a day before its contents are known, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as authority rather than as pretending.

Now, I want to be careful, because there is a version of this that is nonsense and I have heard it preached.

The nonsense version says that a believer should be cheerful about a bad forecast and never mind the news. That is not what the verse does. The psalm that contains it also contains a man surrounded by enemies and calling out in distress. It does not deny the weather.

It puts something ahead of the weather. That is a different move and it is a much stronger one.

You are not required to pretend about a hard day, and it was never denial that made a man steady. Psalm 118 holds a decision to rejoice and a man surrounded by trouble inside the same song. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person honest and settled at the same time.

The order is the whole thing

Here is why the sequence matters so much, and it is mechanical rather than mystical.

Whatever arrives first becomes the frame. Everything after it is read inside that frame. If the first thing is a forecast, the day is a weather event with some living inside it. If the first thing is a headline, the day is a world situation with a man inside it.

If the first thing is that the Lord made this day, then the weather is a fact inside a day that already has an owner. Same rain. Different position.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. (Psalm 19:1)

That verse is about the sky, which is also what the forecast is about. Both are looking at the same object and one of them is reporting a pressure system and the other is reporting an owner, and both are true.

You have a first frame available that nothing later in the day can revise, and the ownership was settled before you woke. Psalm 118:24 grounds the whole decision on who made the day rather than on what is in it, and the Spirit of God is the one who can put a fact underneath a man before the information gets to him.

What I am actually asking

Not that you stop checking the weather. There is work outside and I would think less of you if you did.

What I am asking is four words in a different order. Boots first.

Get up, put the boots on, and while that is happening, say the line. This is the day which the Lord made. Then check the forecast, and check it as a man who already knows whose day it is.

It sounds too small to matter. I would have said the same at your age. But I have watched enough men to know that the small mechanical changes are the ones that hold, and the large intentional ones are the ones that get talked about for a year and never happen.

You are able to change an order without changing a life, and the changing was never going to require a new man. Psalm 118:24 is one sentence that takes four seconds to say. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes four seconds do work that a resolution never did.