Over the weekend, the first winter storm of the season came through my section of the American Midwest.  By most standards, it was not terribly onerous:  a few inches of snow.  Its winds, however, made up the difference.  All night and all day, for two days and nights running, the winds howled, screaming through the trees, sparking every chime into life, sweeping madly across the land.  I was amazed.
     Many years ago, when I lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a region known for the ferocity of its weather, I always took walks in the blizzards which regularly pummeled us.  While everyone else was bundled up in their homes, drinking a hot drink by their fires, I was outside, trekking through a nearby forest or field, taking it all in.
     And what was I taking in?  As I look back on that time in my life, I realize I was taking in, or at least trying to take in, the deeper power that I felt was moving through the storm.  I think I was trying to grasp the meaning out of which this meteorological moment was coming, the point of the world in which such wonder was occurring.  I was looking, I think, for the purpose of existence.  Why such power?  Why such magnificence?
     Although today I find it logical enough to say that existence's purpose is to be found in the fact of God, as I reflect on the storm that rocked, literally, my area over the weekend, I see that perhaps it is not so simple.  God notwithstanding, I would say that I will never know purpose with precision; I will never know why, independently and absolutely why there is purpose, why we live in the midst of such awesome display.
     I'll never know why there is a God.  I only know that we would not "be" without one.