I started wading in an optic pool of a thought stimulant. While still less than knee-deep, I stepped into an unseen informational overload tar pit. With just a few keystrokes on my laptop, it wasn’t long before I was over my ability to comprehend and correlate. In that overwhelmed state, I lost the thought that started the original pondering. At one point in my research, I had seven search boxes going on the web browser.
It’s not two days later, and all the stuff has distilled into a desire to finally understand a term I hear on every weather forecast, “dew point.” Sometimes my pondering process is like falling asleep in bed and being awakened in a different time and space continuum.
The weatherman/woman/person, “certified meteorologists,” has explained “dew point” as clearly as possible. But their explanations leave me convinced of their complete understanding and my inability to put the moving pieces together.
I still get bewildered that they are meteorologists when they do not study meteors. I know what a meteor is and what the suffix “ologist” means, but those two don’t explain the word’s meaning.
Before I could get to dewpoint, I had to untangle that troubling cognitive knot. A chunk of ice, or a rock, blazing through our night sky is an atmospheric phenomenon. And that is what the origin of the word means. Etymologically, the word meteor comes from Middle English and a Middle French word from a Medieval Latin word, a Greek word that means “high in the air” connected with a suffix that means “to lift.” So, there you have it; something lifted high in the air. A meteorologist is a person who studies phenomena that happen in our atmosphere. “Dew point” is one of those atmospheric phenomena.
Aren’t you glad you learned to read?
I found eight different definitions of dew point. Dew point is not so much a thing as it is an event, more precisely, the conditions that allow this atmospheric event to occur.
Here is an explanation I found at https://www.livescience.com/43269-what-is-dew-point.html;
The dew point is the temperature to which air must be cooled to become saturated with water vapor, given a particular air pressure and water content. When air is cooled below the dew point, its moisture capacity is reduced, and airborne water vapor will condense to form liquid water, known as dew. The higher the dew point, the more moisture the air contains and the more humid it feels.
And I still don’t get it! But I do get this: I feel comfortable and energetic when the dew point is less than 55 degrees. When the dew point is between 55-65 degrees, the air starts sticking to me, weighing me down. When the dew point is over 65 degrees, everyone around me gets irritable and, as Jan would say, less charming.
What does all this have to do with anything? I’m glad you asked.
I grew up in a conservative, highly involved church family. I went to Sunday School every Sunday morning and Training Union that night. I graduated from what was, at the time, a Baptist College. And I have two Baptist seminary degrees. I learned to speak fairly fluent Christianese. But I struggled with how all of the things I knew about God worked together to build and maintain a satisfying life. My attempts to explain what I believed sounded more like the party line pitch than a compelling testimonial of the New Life defined in the Bible.
It is possible to know all the keywords of our boldly proclaimed doctrine and yet have little experience with the Doctor. There is a fear that most churchgoers have learned the vocabulary to convey to each other but lack the means to make our personal spiritual experience understandable to outsiders, the unenlightened.
Could we be better at regurgitating what we have been taught than relaying who we have discovered? In our effort to assist the Kingdom in coming, have we unwittingly exchanged a walk in the Garden with our Creator with cramming for a final exam?
Is how we talk to each other unintelligible, or incomprehensible, to those around us who are desperately listening to hear a word of real hope and a twinkling of directional light in their darkness?
The cause of our persistent joy should be easier to relate to a non-religious world than the definition of dew point. Notice what Jesus said about us, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8, Christian Standard Bible)
Those who have chosen to accept Jesus’ invitation to follow him are to be the evidence of what he can do in a human. We were never meant to be his “theologians.” We are eyewitnesses! Each follower of Jesus is a point where God walks on earth! God is in you. Where you are is where God is! And if we allow Him, He will let the world know it.
So, be very grounded in the Bible’s teaching and engage the people around you with integrity, honesty, and humility. They are not looking for a vocabulary, but they are looking for a God who is vocalizing through you. You are the evidence of the power of the Divine Creator God.
Photo – This is a six-inch Atlantic Ocean wave breaking on the beach at Tybee Island, Georga.
Baldwin Heirlooms 