Somewhere there is a very remarkable country, in which they have a very strange climate. The weather in this queer land does not depend on sun or rain, on clouds or sky. It depends entirely on the people themselves. If the people are cross, a thunder storm comes up, and the lightnings flash, and everything gets dark and terrible. If the people are sad, it is sure to rain. If the people are surly, a sharp frost covers the ground. If the people are gloomy, the sun hides its face behind thick clouds. If the people are cheery, the sun comes out again, and everything is bright.
In this strange country one person is often responsible for the weather of the whole town. The crossness of one man will make a start like a little cloud in one corner of the sky, and it will grow from man to man, just as the cloud grows, until after a while the whole sky will be very cloudy. And so the people in that land have had to try to keep each other good for the purpose of getting good weather, if for no other.
And, after all, children, I am not sure that this queer land is so very different from the place where you and I live. The way people feel and the way they act do not, to be sure, make real rain and real thunder and bring on genuine clouds in this world of ours; but they make a kind of storm that is a good deal worse. Bad feelings in the heart cause a coldness that is worse than any frost of spring or fall, a lightning flash that does more damage than any that ever came from the thunder cloud, and torrents of tears far more hurtful than any rainfall.
Christ came to show us how to keep our soul weather sunny all the time, how to drive away bad temper and the blues, how to sweep the clouds away from our spirits and the darkness from our lives. If we have Christ living in our hearts, if we all belong to his sunshine committees, then, no matter what the weather is in the sky and on the earth, it will be fair weather in our lives.