SOME LIKE IT HOT

The time goes by SO quickly!  I believe it was February when I started this blog.  The weather was cold and snowy. It was winter.  Now, less than four months later it’s June!  I know that summer “technically” doesn’t start until the “Summer Solstice” on June 21, but in the “world of Bob Baril” summer is June 1 through August 31.  My favorite seasons are spring and fall- for many reasons.  Church attendance is ALWAYS best in spring and fall.  People are actually more willing to serve the Lord and to seek God in spring and fall.  I like the climate of spring and fall.  Winter is just too dark and too cold.  Summer is too hot.

I used to be the biggest baby in the world when it comes to the heat!  If the temperature went above 75 degrees, I’d start complaining.  At above 85 and humid, I was probably a worse complainer than the Israelites at the time of the Exodus complaining about the manna and demanding quail!  If the mercury hit 100, I would be surly!  I craved air conditioning like a moth trying to penetrate an exterior light bulb.  

Now, I still don’t LIKE heat.  My ideal world would have low humidity- high temperatures of maybe 66 degrees and low temperatures of about 47.  But I took God’s crash course in not complaining about the heat back in 1990 and 1991.  I made two missions trips to Haiti - the first in the early Fall of 1990 and the second in March of 1991.  The groups I went with did not stay in Port-Au-Prince.  We traveled to some very remote areas over probably eighty miles southwest of the capital city.  In most of those places there was no electricity and no refrigeration.  Villages up in the mountains were actually not too bad as far as comfort.  The temperature would get to around 72 during the day and fall to around 60 at night with moderate to low humidity.   Coastal villages were a completely different story.  There, 92 to 102 degrees during the day and 80 degrees at night- all with very high humidity- were common.   In the country, “houses” (glorified huts) were NOT completely enclosed.  Typically, you’d have a gap of about 4 inches between the roof and the walls.  And the “doors” were anything but secure.  Bees (mostly wood bees) routinely flew in and out of the houses, as did flies and beetles.  Spiders were everywhere.  On each trip, we spent about a week living with those conditions.   You could NOT get a cold drink.  You could NOT get comfortable.  In the coastal villages, you just had to deal with the heat.  To the Haitians, it was normal.

No matter how hot and how humid it gets in Massachusetts or anywhere else in the U.S.A., air conditioning is available, as is refrigeration.  I can get cold beverages to drink.  I can take comfortable showers.  I can easily wash my clothes.  I can (usually) avoid having too many insects fly into the house.  No, summer is not my favorite time of year, but I can honestly say that I do not do any of the kind of complaining about the heat that I used to.  I’ve learned that it really isn’t too bad.  

The hardest part of summer for me is hearing everybody ELSE complain about the heat.  My late mother used to say that constantly complaining about the heat only makes it feel worse.  She was right.  My advice is, think about those Haitians.  Don’t complain about the heat.  Be thankful for air conditioning.  (Even our “crummy little old” church building is air conditioned- we’re really pretty spoiled!)  Something that annoys me is people frantically fanning themselves with the church bulletins when I’m trying to preach.  I can remember how hot the Catholic church was in the summers back when I was a kid.  Today, St. John’s in Canton is air conditioned.  It was not air conditioned until about fifteen years ago.  I can remember that church being STIFLING hot in the summer with big, noisy “industrial strength” fans running throughout the mass.  “The greatest generation” and their kids didn’t seem to mind that stuff back in 1966.  Again, today we’re SO spoiled.  So, try not to sit there (or at whatever church YOU attend) frantically fanning yourself with the bulletin.  And try not to whine too much about the heat.  Some people actually LIKE it hot!  And, before we all know it, it’ll be January 2007 and probably 3 degrees below zero outside!

“...I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”  (from Philippians 4:11)