Faith in the face of an ice storm: Is God a parachute in my plane?
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
As a major ice storm approaches that could affect more than two hundred million people, we reflect on our collective impotence in the face of nature, even in the most technologically advanced age in human history. Faced with forces we cannot control, it makes sense that every civilization has turned to religion—but in a post-Christian culture, faith is often dismissed as a placebo effect or outdated superstition. The question, then, is whether we relate to Jesus transactionally—as a “weather god,” a “healing god,” or a “spare tire” in our car—or whether we experience the deeper reality of the Christian faith.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings on this Friday, January the 23rd, 26. |
| 0:06.0 | Welcome to Denison Forum's Daily Article podcast. |
| 0:09.5 | Today's daily article is written by theologian and published author Dr. Jim Denison |
| 0:14.3 | and narrated by yours truly, Chris Elkins. |
| 0:18.3 | Where I live, we are less than 24 hours away from a major ice storm that is predicted |
| 0:24.5 | to shut down our area for days. Roads will become impassable. Power lines may come down. Everyone is |
| 0:31.2 | stocking up on food and preparing for the worst. Since most of us remember the Great Texas Freeze of 2021, we're reliving the pain of |
| 0:40.1 | those terrible days in advance. Our situation is by no means unique. This system could end up |
| 0:46.1 | affecting more than 200 million people in the U.S. It's an odd thing, really, our collective |
| 0:52.4 | impotence in the face of nature. |
| 0:54.7 | You and I live in the most technologically advanced age in human history. |
| 0:59.2 | The slab of glass in my pocket can access the world's store of information gathered across human history. |
| 1:06.2 | These words I am typing on my laptop will soon be transmitted to hundreds of thousands of people in |
| 1:12.5 | every nation on earth. My home is more climate controlled and electronically equipped than any home |
| 1:18.9 | I have ever owned. And yet a winter storm I can neither for stall nor shorten will dominate |
| 1:25.0 | my life for the next few days. Think how people felt in the earlier |
| 1:29.1 | eras when there was no sophisticated meteorological instruments to predict the weather and no electricity |
| 1:35.1 | to light and heat their homes. No wonder every civilization known to history has worshipped some |
| 1:41.5 | type of deity or deities. When you're facing forces you cannot defeat, |
| 1:46.4 | it only makes sense to call for help from forces greater than yourself. If worshiping a god of |
| 1:52.0 | rain and storms can protect you and your family from the weather, this becomes a why not |
| 1:57.1 | proposition. If such worship seems to correlate over time with better outcomes, you'll likely |
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