The Illusion of Control

After finishing my first semester at Gordon-Conwell Seminary near Boston in December 1981, I hit the road for Christmas vacation in Minnesota, and then a few weeks later I drove back east.  Two other Minnesotans joined me on this road trip—24 hours driving each way.

We left Boston late one day and drove through a snowy night.  When daylight struck some­where in central Pennsylvania, we saw a great many cars and trucks strewn about the embankments and ditches of I-80, including a lot of jack-knifed tractor-trailers.  We were stunned—the weather must have been really nasty a couple hours ahead of us!

And on the way back, a “wintry mix” brought traffic to a standstill on I-80.  We got restless inching along in eastern PA, so we exited to trail-blaze (we had maps—you can get any­where with a map!).  The off-ramp sloped downward, and as I drove my Plymouth Horizon began to slide, then spin, leaving us backwards in the middle of a country highway—thankfully with no traffic.  Only then did we realize that the pavement was a skating rink.  We did eventually get back to Boston.

This memory came to mind as I read an article by Trevin Wax, “The Blessing of Weather that Confounds the Control-Freak” (from his blog at The Gospel Coalition).  Nothing like the mix of winter and driving to remind us we’re not in control.  To be sure, in our day of incessant internet connectivity and constant access to news-traffic-weather info, and with that GPS voice telling us what to do every inch of the way, we imagine we’re in charge:  we’re masters of the land.

But it’s all an illusion—we weren’t in control back in the dark ages of pre-digital travel, and we still can’t subdue the weather to our wishes.  And that’s good—God humbles us in this way.

Wax says, “When weather takes us by surprise, we cancel meetings and rearrange schedules, and everyone seems to understand:  There is nothing we can do. Strangely, this is one of Weather’s biggest blessings.  In a world where we try to sustain the illusion that we are in control of reality, the Weather does not comply.”  And in that way the Lord of all Creation gets our attention and reminds us of his supremacy and our frail, dependent condition.  And that is good for the soul.