Abundance of Rain

It hadn't rained in our area for at least fifty days. Since good steady rain for the land is a sign of God's blessing, day after day we were not being blessed.

Jude talks about ungodly men as waterless clouds. Waterless clouds drifting by at a time of drought are also an ungodly thing. The pond was way down and the birds were coming to its edge to drink. Looking up at our skies, James occasionally would frown, "Mom, look, it is strange. There are clouds but no rain."

The other evening he and I watched the sunset paint a pink glowing frame around several odd, small clouds. Strange tufts reached down from them towards earth making them look like cotton balls someone had pulled at. They appeared to be trying to pour down rain, but it wouldn't come.

We saw how rain could fall from one of those small clouds onto one neighborhood and not another, or even one house and not another. It happened to us last week. For five minutes early one morning our house got wet.

But still the weather man looked for rain. Later that night the wind came up, and he got lots of small, white puffs scudding across a bright waxing moon on a black sky, but still no rain. Every day, clouds but no blessing.

This morning I rose early and went to the backyard to read Isaiah 64. "Oh Lord, that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down...make thy name known to thine adversaries, that they may tremble at thy presence."

I had to agree, O, Lord we need Your presence. We need to see you in the sanctuary. We are so dry, dry in more ways than one! The pine trees are dropping their red pinestraw and the bushes are drooping. But worse, our hearts are so needy.

Then I saw the reason. "There is no one that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us and hast consumed us" (and here is the key to the rain not falling), "because of our iniquities...

But we cry out, "I will stir myself! O Lord, thou art our Father!"

When God gives a spirit of repentence, and tears of grief rise up from deep inside one's belly and rain down one's cheeks, it may well mean that He is about to bless. Through tears I unwound the hose and began dragging it around the yard, stopping at each bush to soak it and then passing to the next. I heard in my heart the words, "priming the pump," Curious, I continued watering and weeping.

Then, startled, I looked up to see a few small sprinkles of rain on the pond. "Oh God! Would you do it? Would you be so gracious as to send us rain this morning?" and I knelt on the patio and cried. "Please, Lord! You are our Father, send the rain!"

All around me gentle raindrops began falling, little spots darkening the pavement. When Elijah besought the Lord for rain, he did not stop praying when a tiny cloud arose from the sea. "It's about the size of a man's hand," his servant reported. Seven times Elijah sent him out to check. He didn't even stop praying when the cloud became huge. He prayed "fervently" until the sky was black and the rain fell hard.

So I continued my prayer with a fervent heart full of thanksgiving. The rain splashed around me and soaked my back. Just as many people had also prayed, it dropped, steady and continuous, gentle, but hard enough to soften the hard earth. All morning long it fell.

The afternoon remained dull and the rain soaked in. The next day it rained again, and the next, slowing softening the bone dry forest floors and settling the dust on the construction sites.

No flooding, just a blessed relief from the drought. God be praised. Again.