When I was a kid, I used to think that hot water froze faster than cold water. I guess it was because it appeared cold water didn’t cool off as fast as hot water did. If you touched the cold water, it always felt, well, cold! When you touched the hot water, it would quickly feel warm, then cold, then very cold. The change was so dramatic that it seemed like the hot water must be freezing faster. Where I lived, we had a pond and ducks. The pond would freeze over solid and the ducks would live in a shed that my dad had prepared for them. Every day twice a day, at least as best as I can remember, he would go out and break the ice in their bowl and put in new water. I don’t remember him putting hot water in, so probably this is also why I figured that cold water must take longer to freeze. Most kids (except for MY kid) think their parents are pretty smart, at least before they become teenagers and decide they know everything.

When I got up today, I decided to take a bath in the big square box of hot water that I keep in a tub in my back yard. The air temp was below 30 when I went out, and the water temp was 101, so when I took the top off the box a warm, moist cloud went billowing up into the air. Soon I was bubbling and churning like a potato in a pot of boiling soup. I watched the steam trail into the sky and thought about how silly I was when I was a kid, thinking hot water froze faster than cold. But then I noticed something else. The more steam I could get into the air at once, the longer it would last. Also, the hotter the water was the more steam it made. Then this all made sense (in a biblical way).

Think of the steam as YOU. Think of it’s disappearing as death. The more “fervent” you are for God, the more you burn to learn his truths, the more likely you are to live as he would have you to live. The bible gives a general rule that those who practice the love of God, who abide by his teachings, tend to live longer lives. Not just limiting it there: the more you are on fire for the Lord the longer you will tend to live.

Something else about that steam, the more there is of it the longer it lasted. That’s because the cold worked on it right away, but in good company it managed to stave off being overcome a bit longer. Living our lives in the company of people all trying to get to heaven makes us stronger, and in turn we tend to keep our cool (ha ha) and do that which is right – which means we tend to again live longer lives. Like my steam clouds, when there are more of us we tend to be stronger. Ever watch a radar screen on the news when the weather report is on? Notice how the thick bands of clouds sweep across the states, but the weaker, solitary fringe parts tend to disappear haphazardly? That’s us, but are we united with the majority or standing alone at the edges?

Finally, I observed that ALL the water in my yard, even the almost frozen stuff, puts up something of a cloud. You have to look hard to see it, but it’s there. The warm cloud is more dramatic and more noticeable. I have neighbors, friends, coworkers that are not Christians. When they do things that are sinful, usually no one even is looking. But let a child of God do something wrong and everyone seems to know about it. The loss of temperature is more dramatic, so they may deem this as us being “more evil” than them, like my thinking the hot water froze faster than cold. In fact they don’t think they are getting colder at all, when in truth they are dangerously close to freezing. Help them! But you can’t help them if you can’t help yourself. Stay true to God!

And you can’t be cold and on fire for the Lord. If you don’t have warm feelings towards your fellow workers here, where does that leave you? Think about it!

Randy