You had to know this was coming!

If you live in the Atlanta area or if you saw us on the news you know that we have had a massive storm that has literally paralyzed the city. The roads look like parking lots, there are people trapped in their cars, which have exhausted the gas tank, and there was a baby born to a mom who was trapped in the traffic jam on I 285.

In my own family I was here keeping watch, looking out the windows and even standing in the cold on the porch as the snow poured from a slate sky covering my swimming pool, cement driveway and brick sidewalk plus covering my red van completely in the frozen white stuff.

I know that people make fun of us Atlanta citizens for running out and buying up all the bread and milk on the grocery store shelves and it is funny…I mean why bread and milk in particular? Given my food drug of choice, and an old-fashioned snow and ice storm calls for comfort food no way out of it, I would choose something chocolate for sure! I don’t drink milk and eat bread anyway so why start when I’m snowed in? Toilet paper folks, toilet paper is what you need an ample supply of in your pantry!

As I listened to the news folk, who took full advantage by commandeering the entire programming for the whole day, talking about how the people were warned but not taking it seriously being the reason for all the problems on the roads, getting caught out in gridlocked traffic, schools that didn’t close soon enough which meant a lot of Atlanta area children are spending the night in the school gyms separated from their less than happy parents, office workers being trapped and spending the night in their offices and being redundant, the entire supply of bread and milk in Atlanta being depleted! As I listened I heard my little brain say, “as it was in the days of Noah.”

That scripture is found in Luke 17:26-30 “The time of the Son of Man will be just like the time of Noah—everyone carrying on as usual, having a good time right up to the day Noah boarded the ship. They suspected nothing until the flood hit and swept everything away. It was the same in the time of Lot—the people carrying on, having a good time, business as usual right up to the day Lot walked out of Sodom and a firestorm swept down and burned everything to a crisp. That’s how it will be—sudden, total—when the Son of Man is revealed.”

The people in Noah’s day heard his warning for 120 years and watched as he built a massive ark that could have housed many people along with all the animals but they chose to ignore the warning. We were all warned but because we had a couple of false alarms already this year everyone felt safe. It’s like the story of the time my grandmother told my mother, then three years old, that she was going to spank her! Little Myrtle squared her shoulders and said “Oh no you want, you’ve said that a lot of times!” Famous last words! Mama had chubby Myrtle brought to her bedside where she lay sick and soundly spanked Myrt’s bottom!

I wonder if we aren’t all tweaking the nose of God and so far He has let us by with the sacrilege that we carry on by ignoring the love generously offered us through Jesus! If you have knowledge of the prophecies of the Bible you don’t need to hear this, but just in case let me be considered a “voice crying, if not in the wilderness, from the frozen tundra of North Georgia” saying there will come a day when you will wish you had prayed, don’t be caught unaware, go out and buy your spiritual bread, milk and oh yeah, toilet paper!

Meanwhile I am waiting with my daughter on her husband who left his job across town at 1PM, instead of leaving there at 11AM as she had urged him to do, and as I write this at 11:15PM he is still trapped in his car because he didn’t listen!