Friday, June 3, 2011

How I Wish It Would Rain

We lived in the desert for eleven years. The total expected rainfall per year was only three inches. Obviously, it doesn’t rain much in the desert. If you grew up in a rainier climate, you miss the rain at first, but after a while you stop expecting it. You adjust to a dry and weary land where there is no water.

I’m beginning to feel the same thing down here. Southeast Texas isn’t a desert. We average over fifty inches of rain a year. Usually. But we’re in a drought. My front yard has lost the fight. I’m drying up. We don’t need a rain shower, we need a tropical storm. We don’t need rain measured in inches, we need rain measured by the foot.
The lake is down so low you can see stumps and sand barges far from shore. Fish are coming into the Vallero asking for bottled water. It’s getting critical. We need rain, big rain. The situation is desperate. God send us rain!

Being desperate for rain is similar to the longing God desires us to have for Him. David wrote: O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
I’m sure David had been through drought before. He had felt the drying, draining effect of being waterless. So the transition into a spiritual application was no major shift.

Longing for God on the level of dying of thirst makes sense to those who have drank of the goodness of God and then stopped drinking. Slowly, at first, the sense of fullness begins to leave until, eventually, pangs erupt. Cravings, like the gnawing emptiness of hunger. We dry up from the inside out. It’s called dehydration. By the time we feel thirst, we’re already there.
For David that was an indication he needed to seek God again, to go back to the fountain and drink until he was full.

I’m there. I want rain to wash away this drought. But more, I want the reign of God’s goodness to rain and replenish my dry spirit. Lord, let it rain! Saturate again this dry and weary land.

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