There are several highway signs of this sort: “X MAY Y.” Here in Texas I’ve seen “BRIDGE MAY ICE.” In New Mexico, down on I-10 there are warning signs: “DUST STORMS MAY EXIST.” One also sees signs warning “GUSTY WINDS MAY EXIST” or even, to return to the bridge, “ICE MAY EXIST.”
Online commentators on these signs—an already too-large group that yours truly is joining, briefly—tend to take them as statements of fact. That is to say, they take “may” as meaning the same thing as “might.” By these signs, motorists are warned that, in the area into which they are driving at 80+ miles per hour, there might be dust storms or gusty winds or something else that would love to remove their vehicle from the asphalt. Signs prefer short words. “May” is shorter than “might” and, indeed, one of its meanings is to indicate possibility, something that might be.
But that’s not how I learned it in the second grade.
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Our teacher had a paper apple tree on the wall, with paper apples labeled with words like “can” and “may.” If one of us asked, “Can I go to the bathroom?” the “can” apple would fall out of the tree to the ground. If someone then said, “May I go to the bathroom?” the apple would rise again to the tree.
Lesson: “May” has to do with permission; “can” has to do with capacity. If I know how to play the piano, then I can do it. But if I’m visiting you, it’s another question whether I may play your piano.
Well, the second grade is way back in my rearview mirror, but this lesson has stuck. When I see “may” I think permission is what is at stake. Quickly, I want to know who is giving permission for these dust storms to exist! Or more precisely, Why has our government taken it upon itself to tell nature what it may do?
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All Christians should know that it is a perennial temptation of government to claim omnipotence. Yet in truth, governors, legislators, judges—all of them serve under God’s providence. They have limited functions. And in the end, they will cast their “crowns” at God’s feet.
We need to remember this, for many important reasons. I know the people who run the highway department do not really think they have power to allow natural phenomena. They do not grant permission for ice to form, and they do not allow dust storms to occur. Nonetheless, it is good for all of us to remember: Only God gives existence to anything. Everything that exists is so by his doing.
Just as he told Job from the whirlwind, so he tells you: Gusty winds have his permission to exist. God permits things to exist that have the capacity to kill you.
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Out & About: Important note about the upcoming “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: We are meeting at St. Matthew’s Cathedral but in a new room in Garrett Hall, a different building than before, on Sunday, September 22, from 5 p.m. to 6:30. (Note: that same evening there is a service at 5 p.m. in the Cathedral itself.) For the seminar, come to the Garrett Hall door (opposite the cathedral, across the green close): on the digital call pad, select 2nd Floor St. Matthew’s, then press “Reception to call.” You will be buzzed in. Come up to the 2nd floor; we will meet in room 201.
Our next seminar will be three weeks later, October 13, on Russell Kirk’s Old House of Fear.
I am preaching the next two Sundays: on September 22 at St. John’s in Corsicana, Tex., at 9:30, and on September 29 at St. Matthew’s in Dallas at 9 and 11:15 a.m.
