Hurricane Matthew has just passed over the east end of Cuba and is headed now for the Bahamas and then Florida. Depending on the track of the center of the storm, my family and I, living just north of Miami, could experience anything from tropical storm force winds (39 to 73 mph) to Category 4 hurricane winds (130 to 156 mph). I’m rather expecting something in the high Category 1 to low Category 3 range (90 to 115 mph). Whatever, it’s likely to be dangerous.

The winds and rains (likely 4 to 7 inches, in some places 10) aren’t the only danger. Like millions of Floridians, I’ll be installing hurricane shutters on my home’s windows and doors. In fact, I’m quitting work for the day as soon as I finish this post to do just that. Big, bulky, sharp-edged, heavy steel sheets that bolt into permanent fittings around our windows, shutters take a long time to install. (Wish I could afford the hurricane impact windows that make shutters unnecessary!) On a large house like ours (in which for years we had eleven people—my wife and I, our seven sons and daughters, my mother, and her father), with lots of windows, the job will take something in the neighborhood of eight hours, and it will require going high up extension ladders for the second-story windows. The danger comes mainly on the ladders—or, rather, when you hit the ground if you fall.

I suppose lots of global warming alarmists are going to claim that Hurricane Matthew was generated by human emissions of carbon dioxide from our addiction to burning fossil fuels for energy. Probably some are already saying so—I won’t take time to check the web for that just now. Of course the claim is nonsense. Hurricanes have been happening for millennia, and we’ve just finished the longest stint on record without a single Category 3 or higher hurricane making landfall on the United States—over ten years.

The real need isn’t to cut fossil fuel use to curb global warming. It’s to raise the standard of living around the world so that people everywhere enjoy the outstanding advance warning systems we do (such as from the National Hurricane Center) and live in well-built houses with devices to protect them from natural disasters. The tragedy is that people in places like Haiti, over which Hurricane Matthew has just passed, lack such things because of their poverty, and consequently they suffer much more.

My prayers are for them, and for all the people in Matthew’s path. And this I know: that the God who works all things after the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11) will work this, too, to the good of all who love Him and are called, that we might be more and more conformed to the image of His Son until at last we reach glory (Romans 8:28–30). Meanwhile, nothing—not global warming, not hurricanes, not anything else in all creation—can separate believers from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:35–39).

 

 

Featured image courtesy of National Hurricane Center/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.