Maybe
August 9, 2012 (Thursday)
According to an official weather site I read today, if Ernesto moves across Mexico and enters the Pacific Ocean, it will be renamed only if it loses its tropical characteristics after leaving the Gulf of Campeche and becomes a tropical storm again in the Pacific. If it were to remain a tropical storm all the way across Mexico before entering the Pacific, it would retain the name, Ernesto. This is a fairly recent rule change.
The satellites see only a storm moving westward. They see land and water, sometimes covered with clouds. There are no geographical names–only water, land and clouds. The job of naming storms, oceans and continents falls to humans on earth.
God did not create national boundaries. God created a planet with oceans and land masses. If there had been a map of the earth in Heaven, there would have been no U.S.A., Brazil, Israel, Syria, Iran, China, Russia, or any other political entity. But the globe upon which we live has many nations. The athletes from 205 nations presented themselves in the Olympic Stadium last week. Many races, nationalities, languages, creeds, etc. were represented by that host of people. They all came together into one place. What an inspiration.
After creating the earth, God put the humans he created in charge of it. They and we, their descendants, bear a huge responsibility as stewards of the earth. We’ve named the earth and everything in it; if it means that much to us, we should take better care of it. And we should get along with each other. As the Bible says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” That makes us guests here. We need to behave ourselves as such.