This fascinating book arrived in stock yesterday and deserves some attention. Malcolm Lee spent his entire working life at the UK Met Office in various roles, including setting up the National Climate Information Centre. As a Christian, his deep understanding of weather observations naturally turns to spiritual application as he considers the creator of these phenomena. This new book is a series of 26 short essays looking at various different weather features, explaining the science behind them and considering the spiritual lessons that can be drawn from them. Accompanying each essay are colour photos and illustrations so that the book becomes a helpful reference tool that can be dipped in and out of. It is aimed at children and teens.

The short extract below is taken from the chapter on Rain and Showers:

Since 1766 rain has been consistently collected and measured in the UK using rain gauges… a funnel channels the rain into a collector where the amount of rain, as a depth in inches or millimetres, is measured. Since 1980 rain has also been measured using radar. Radar is a system that sends out signals then listens for echoes of that signal coming back from distant objects… The further away the object is, in this case a raindrop, the longer the echo takes to return, and the more raindrops there are, the stronger the echo. This means that radars can detect where it is raining and how heavy the rain is, and they can do it as well in the dark as in daylight.

Twelve radars, installed on high ground cover the whole of the UK… Radar often picks up showers that miss the rain gauges and enables weather forecasters to track them as they move across the country.

The differences between rain gauges and radars teach us a little lesson. We human beings are like rain gauges, we can only know about what is going on where we are at this time; but God is like the radar, he sees what is going on everywhere all the time, nothing escapes his eye – he is omniscient. He also has a perfect knowledge of what is coming in the future, because he sends (or ordains) it. For these reasons God is able to watch over and care for you even when you feel to be on your own. Sometimes the radar mistakes birds or even the ground for rain, so we can’t always trust it. What a mercy that this cannot be said of God! How often the psalmists encourage us to “trust in the Lord”, and we live to prove that we can!

Lessons from the Weather by Malcolm Lee, published by Gospel Standard Trust Publications