At 5 a.m. on the eighth day of February, of the year of our Lord 2010, it began to snow in Bowling Green.

They had predicted it, the national weather watchers with all of their equipment and technology.With many words they explained the high and low pressure fronts that provided clues as to when and where the frozen bits of water would land. The south would receive the most they said, DC and SC would be pummeled with this “February fury”, and would perhaps even have as much as 32 inches of the stuff dumped ever so gracefully onto their streets and the homes and cars that sat unsuspectingly along them.

Fear was the most common reaction, with annoyance close at its heels.

No sooner had the first dire predictions left the mouths of those “weathermen” than people began to stock up on bread, water, and other “essential items”, such as eggs, milk and electric generators. The stores, well supplied only hours before, now failed to cope with the spiking demand for survival items.

After all, 32 inches was a fair bit of snow, and who knew if the world might suffer some unforeseen apocalypse soon after. The weathermen were only human after all.

Schools were closed, the teachers and superintendents that kept them secretly rejoicing at this unexpected break in the daily routine as they ran off to buy survival items of their own. Students simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief as they realized the assignment they had worked on feverishly through the night was no longer due in three hours, and they might actually have an uninterrupted nap. Those unlucky enough to still have classes drearily trudged to school, hoping against hope that the authorities might recognize their plight and at least cancel the classes that remained.

All across the country people called off work, cancelled meetings, postponed events and generally took full advantage of the white precipitation that fell from the sky. All the while wondering how it was some people–those in more arid parts of the world–lived without the stuff that was really more of a blessing than a curse, although everyone pretended it was the other way round.

And in Bowling Green, John Michael Buckingham thanked his Creator for disrupting the world and giving him and his friends a much-needed interruption from life. It wasn’t that he wished for his day to be cancelled, he was prepared and ready to see through the plans he had made, but he certainly welcomed a day of rest and rejuvenation.

“God is merciful,” he thought to himself. “I hope we have another snow day tomorrow.”

“We make our own plans, but the LORD decides where we will go.”

Proverbs 16:9 (Contemporary English Version)