Praise God for things I hate but which he obviously likes

Well, it's winter at last. I kept hoping global warming would free me from its frosty grasp but no such luck. I'm Jamaican, warm-blooded. I HATE winter.

I also hate roaches, mice, snakes, viruses, bacteria....oh I could go on.

Okay, I'm a creative person. But I don't create every little thing that pops into my brain. Why our Creator would make horrendous things I simply cannot fathom. Oh yeah, sure they're part of the grand circle of life, yadda-yadda...and the world would probably fall apart if snakes, winter, and viruses didn't exist...but dang! One would think that a being who could make galaxies, crab nebulas, amber waves of grain, the human tongue which can detect 40,000 (or is that 40 million) different tastes, and long stretches of desert sand would have some sense of taste or self-control. Did he totally have to totally create every little thing that came to his mind?

But God saw fit to create stuff I am not particularly enamoured of. I totally believe that praising what we dislike brings blessings. Remember what happened with Corrie Ten Boom? In her autobiography, The Hiding Place, she talks about being in the concentration camp. One of the buildings where she and her fellow prisoners were imprisoned had fleas. Everyone had them. She and her family decided to praise God for fleas. The upshot? The Nazi soldiers didn't like entering that particular building so they were relatively free from the Nazis boterhing them. PLUS the people inside the building could have Bible studies. Okay, it's not the super-greatest most wonderful thing. But it's a blessing that came from those vermins.

But sometimes we should just praise in order to praise. So today I'm going to praise vermin. Because God obviously likes them and created them because he loved them and thought they were needful to the earth. And I will praise winter, a season which so many others love but which I consider the worst vermin of all. In the grand scheme of things, it's the Creator's taste and wisdom that counts. But Lord knows I'd like to have wonderful house in Hawaii -- far from a volcano. Praise ye the Lord.