Media headlines about this year’s severe winter weather continue to pile up as rapidly as the latest snowfall here in Wisconsin: “Blizzard conditions likely,” “Unyielding winter weather delays airlines,” “Severe weather estimated to cost US economy nearly $50 billion.”

Yet last year was also the driest in over a century in California—and the drought continues. Meanwhile, Great Britain is slogging through its wettest winter ever; the Thames burst its banks in London, and other areas have been under water since December. During the recent Winter Olympics, daytime highs hitting 50 degrees F. made Sochi one of the warmest cities ever to host the Winter Games.

One website summed it up: “Why is global weather out of whack?” Good question, but perhaps a more urgent—and meaningful—one might be, What can we do about it?

Should we take a philosophical approach: just cope; make the best of it? (Yes, I’ve stepped outside on a snowy winter’s evening and appreciated nature’s serene beauty.)

Or might we instead fast-forward to the coming spring, thinking about the warmth and sunshine that inevitably will come?

Actually there’s something far more substantial we can do in the face of extreme weather: We can pray. Not just wistfully hoping that things will thaw out soon, but praying with a deep, spiritual conviction that everything, including the atmosphere, is under God’s control. This kind of prayer enables us to contribute to both ending extreme weather, and preventing it from ever getting started.

There’s a compelling example of this in the Bible, where Christ Jesus stopped violent weather in just a few moments. Mark’s Gospel describes a night when he and his disciples were on a ship, and they ran into “a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.” While his disciples feared for their lives, Jesus “arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:37–39).

God’s ever-present and settled calm are something we can realize right now.

Not just a little relief, but a great calm! The discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, called on this same Christly authority to reverse extreme weather events in her day. More than once, fierce storms literally dissolved as they approached her New England home. One of her students wrote how “right over the house there was a rift—the [clouds] were dividing ….” She found Mrs. Eddy “looking up, and I could see by the expression on her face that she was not seeing clouds but was realizing the Truth.… [S]he said to me, ‘There are no clouds to hide God’s face, and there is nothing that can come between the light and us—it is divine Love’s weather’ ”(Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Edition, pp. 354–355).

Another student recalled that Eddy’s firmness on praying about destructive weather didn’t mean trying to control it humanly, but rather knowing “that God governs the weather and no other influence can be brought to bear upon it” (Adam H. Dickey, “Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy,” We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Volume II, p. 413).

To me, this gives us a clear starting point—and a sense of what our own prayers can accomplish. In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy wrote, “Mind’s control over the universe, including man, is no longer an open question, but is demonstrable Science” (p. 171). (Mind is a Bible-based term for God she often used to describe His flawless, intelligent rule over all creation.)

Doesn’t this point to the fact that God’s ever-present and settled calm are something we can realize right now? And isn’t this far different from the prevailing worldview that we’re virtually helpless in the face of extremes of any sort?

Several years ago I was scheduled to speak to an audience in the Boston area. As the date grew closer, a blizzard was forecast for the entire region. My hosts and I considered whether we should reschedule. Before making that call, however, we agreed to pray together—specifically, to affirm that God’s law of perpetual good is universal, and is able to silence the fear, upset, and chaos that accompany extreme weather.

We rejected the temptation to fear the forecast or to doubt God’s ability to make “the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still” (Psalms 107:29). To us, this weather prediction was abnormal, unnecessary, and certainly no part of the peaceful reality of divine Mind’s atmosphere. We kept the date as planned, and the day I boarded the airplane, the entire weather system moved offshore—without dumping any significant snow on the area.

Is it possible for us to experience consistently favorable weather? Yes. It’s not only possible, it becomes inevitable as we exchange our view of it as a destructive adversary for that which God, divine Mind, creates and maintains—a peaceful, gentle ally.