Rain

Having been brought up in the country, and being a minister in two rural communities, I have a spiritual attachment to, and regard for, the Australian bush and landscape. The current 10+ year dry-spell/drought has been an agonising period of suffering and hopelessness for many farmers and rural residents. Although there have been glimmers of hope over these years, it has been a geographical and emotional wilderness.

The rains over the past week have been a beautiful, cold blessing of the earth and nature has woken up. Birds singing, plants plunging roots down into the sodden earth trying to establish themselves, new growth on gardens long deprived, and even water running in creeks and waterways that have been dry and barren.

I don't know why our country has suffered for so long under a dry sky. Is it nature's cycle and this part of the earth needed a dry spell to balance and nurture the global climate ? Has human intervention caused our world to lose its sense of balance from which it may never recover? Has God stepped in, declaring that the people of Australia need judgement imposed on them in some form to awaken them to their immorality and Godlessness? In the large cycles of this worlds development are we moving into a dry age, as we have had an ice age in the past?

I don't know, and although it may sound indifferent, a part of me doesn't care!
Let's switch off our analytical brains for a while and simply REJOICE. Go and stand on the verandah at home or the foyer at work or the shelter-shed at school and listen to the sound of rain; watch it as it gathers and runs; listen for the voices of birds and let a smile not only alter your face but warm your heart.

Thanks God for the blessing of rain on a sunburnt country.