From The Pastors

“Psst. Hey. You got any…salt?”

From
January 30, 2026

The storm was two thousand miles wide, which is the kind of number that makes you picture a satellite photo and a deep-voiced narrator saying, “Nature… is displeased.” But here’s the thing about weather: it can span half a continent and still become extremely personal in the last twelve feet between your front door and the part of your driveway where your car would theoretically like to exist.

On the news, it was an event. On my property, it is now a permanent installation.

Around here, I have come to believe, the official snow-removal strategy is called Hope. Specifically: Hope that the temperature will pop above freezing within a day or two, and the sun will do the heavy lifting while we all go back to pretending we are competent adults who live in a modern society.

This week, Hope filed a leave request. It has been bitterly cold since the snow fell. Oh, it got almost above freezing briefly at the end of the storm, but that just means the “snow” quickly graduated into layers. Snow first. Then sleet. Then freezing rain. And since then, no sign of temps above thirty-two. If you live in a sane climate, you may hear “freezing rain” and imagine delicate icicles and the kind of sparkling beauty that makes people take photos. In my driveway it has produced something that appears to be a low-budget glacier, shipped in flat-pack form and assembled by Satan.

And as with all modern disasters, the true crisis is not the weather. It is supply chains.

I have not been able to buy ice melt salt since three days before the snow fell. You might be thinking, “Surely you could find some now.” Friend, it is now four days after, and the shelves are still as bare as the expression on my face when I realized I’d be learning new uses for medieval tools.

Salt, in our region, might become the new currency. Money is fine for small things like groceries and gasoline, but when it comes to the real essentials—traction, walkability, a sense of control over one’s own life—your flimsy paper dollars cannot compete with a blue bag labeled MELT.

I have pictured myself approaching a neighbor like a character in a post-apocalyptic movie.

“Psst. Hey. You got any… salt?”

He would glance both ways, then open his coat to reveal a box of kosher and three bags of pink Himalayan. My wife seriously wondered if maybe we should use the Epsom salt bath crystals we have in our bathroom. Cause nobody I know has big bags of proper ice melt. Those are for oligarchs and people who somehow planned ahead without being mocked as “panicked shoppers.”

I am forced to admit I mocked the panicked shopping. Especially at Trader Joe’s. I saw the carts piled high with emergency provisions like it was the last helicopter out of Saigon, and I laughed because I am wise and rational.

But it turns out that a week’s supply of Pirate Booty was indeed an appropriate purchase.

Not for nutrition, obviously. Pirate Booty is not food. Pirate Booty is a morale system. Pirate Booty is the crunchy reassurance that you are still technically alive and not just an ice-bound mammal gnawing on chair legs while the driveway evolves into a new geological era.

At a certain point I stopped thinking of the driveway as something to clear and started thinking of it as “our ice mine”. We went out in shifts. Actual shifts. Like our home had been converted into an ice mining company, except without the benefit of hard hats, paychecks, or that jaunty whistling you hear in old movies when men go off to work at a mine.

The snow shovel was the first thing to lose its job. Then the garden spade got blunted and stopped being useful. We actually escalated to using a crowbar and a pick. Nothing makes you feel more like a pioneer than standing in your suburban driveway attacking the ground with a tool that looks like it should come with a warning about black lung and cave-ins.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I heard a rumor that someone in our congregation had tried a flamethrower.

Now. I want to be clear. I do not know that this happened. I heard it the way you hear that someone saw Bigfoot behind Walmart. But I choose to believe it happened because it is spiritually important that it happened.

The story is that the flamethrower couldn’t be kept lit.

Which makes perfect sense, I suppose. Or at least narrative sense, if you believe the world is out to get all of us now.

And even with heavy duty tools, you chip and chip and chip, and what you get for your labor is a small square of exposed driveway the size of a placemat. The ice does not “come up” so much as it grudgingly acknowledges that you are there. It’s like trying to evict a glacier that has a law degree.

Meanwhile, on the big-picture scale, officials are still talking about plowing strategies and priorities and “main routes.” In other words: roads that are not my driveway. The streets in parts of DC are still unplowed, which adds a delightful civic flavor to the whole thing. Like, sure, we are about to send actual human beings out to the actual moon again (look it up), but we cannot reliably remove frozen water from paved surfaces in the nation’s capital.

I have also lost track of what day it is.

At first this might seem concerning, like the beginning of a mental break of some sort. But it turns out it can be… fine? When everything outside is white and gray and frozen solid, the weekdays lose their authority. Tuesday stops bossing you around. Wednesday becomes a rumor. You exist in a simpler calendar consisting of only three times:

1. Before Ice
2. Ice
3. After Ice (mythical)

Now there are early forecasts predicting another big snow this coming weekend. It’s too early to tell if it will hit us. Meteorologists, at this point, are basically celebrity fortune-tellers with “European Models,” waving their hands and saying “we shall see” about another “thumping” of snow.

My only hope is that either the snow doesn’t come or salt supplies come in. Or maybe I’ll just build an ice wall and wait for dragons to come free us.

In all seriousness, though, I hope you are warm, safe, and not too worn out from chipping away at your own personal ice mine.

* * *

Okay. I think humor is important, especially when things become difficult. For me, humor isn’t denial; it’s a pressure valve. But I also have something serious to say about world events, and it’s not very funny, nor is it entirely happy. If you only have the emotional bandwidth today for something light, feel free to stop reading here. You are not obligated to wrestle with all the world’s ills all of the time.

* * *

So. Here’s my serious note:

There’s a lot going on right now. As you well know. Americans are at each other’s throats in some places, people are getting killed, people are being targeted in various ways, and it’s ugly. The quality of rhetoric has plummeted to new lows, and not everyone can even agree on what might otherwise seem to be fundamental facts, let alone on how to interpret and respond to events.

In the broader world, we have just seen a government murder maybe thousands of their own citizens in a short span of time. An expansionist war rages on in Europe, and some fear it will broaden even further. Tensions are rising in Asia, as well.

I might be tempted to throw my hands up and declare humanity a mistake. But I don’t, of course, because, in the Lord’s providence, there is no evil allowed into the world without there being some good that rises up as well, whether to confront it, to bring succor to its victims, or to build up in one place while things fall down in another. And the world is full of good deeds, beautiful sights, and amazing wonders that stand completely independent of the works of hell. The Lord God Jesus Christ rules the heavens and the earth, and His rule will never end. So what to do?

Read the Word. Pray. Gather with your neighbors and worship. Look in your own heart and tear out anything you see that is not loving and wise. Find ways of seeking and serving the good that is somewhere within every other person ever born. Change your habits so you do less harm and from there more good. Love.

Don’t be shocked that there’s evil in the world, and don’t ever think you know for certain that you’re not a contributor to its work. Do your best and trust in the Lord.

Like I said, stay warm, get safe, and I hope you find rest from your labor when you need it.

“I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Rev. Glenn “Mac” Frazier, Pastor

February 2026 Pastor’s Report