Bible Articles
...And If a Tree Falls
...And If a Tree Falls
“If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap” (Eccl. 11:3,4, ESV)
Very often man takes pride in what he perceives as his ability to control what happens in life. There is nothing inherently wrong with improving ourselves and our way of life, but we also must understand many things are simply out of our control. In fact, some things happen randomly...like where the tree falls.
In the early-1960s, the U.S. government began researching weather modification through human intervention. The United States Bureau of Reclamation sponsored research at several universities, including Texas Tech University and Texas A & M University, to study the effectiveness of “cloud seeding.” Cloud seeding is a type of weather modification that aims at changing the amount of precipitation produced by clouds. The process involves disbursing substances into the air which serve as cloud condensation with the purpose of increasing the potential for precipitation or rainfall. The question of whether cloud seeding statistically and significantly increases precipitation is a matter of academic debate to this day.
The problem I see with cloud seeding is the fact that clouds must be present before they can be “enhanced” as far as their potential to produce significant precipitation. God alone creates rain-clouds. As the wise man clearly stated many hundreds of years ago, the clouds are full of rain and they empty themselves on the earth. When conditions are right, clouds will produce rain, no matter what man does or thinks about it. If it rains on one man’s field, conditions cannot be changed to cause that rain to be relocated where another man would have it. The weather is out of our control, so we simply have to deal with it. It is pointless and counterproductive to worry about the weather or wish we could change it.
This fact leads to a question: how do we deal with circumstances which are out of our control? The wise man would have us know we will accomplish nothing if we simply wait for the “perfect” set of circumstances to come along before we get to work. The farmer would never raise a crop if he waited for “perfect” weather conditions to plant the seed, water the plant or disperse the fertilizer! The farmer does his work in spite of “imperfect” weather conditions.
Consider this: with all the uncertainty in the world right now, we cannot change where “the tree falls.” However, our obedience to God’s will affects the eternal fate of our souls. We must not allow the uncontrollable things of this life to hinder us from pleasing God and gaining the heavenly reward He has promised to all who obey him. The writer to the Hebrews said, “...there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” Let’s get to work!
Lance Bowman
