Drought

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inExploration of the Self, Parable, Metaphor and Illustration, Spiritual Formation

By Chaplain Mike

We haven’t had a good day of rain where I live for over two months.

Our lawns are past turning brown. Now they are brittle, straw-like. Weeds provide the only green at ground level. They proliferate. Hardy, demonically so, they thrive where all that is desirable dies from thirst.

Farmers are cleaning up their fields earlier this year. The combines throw corn dust into the air and it wafts down the road, into town, and into our nostrils. I drive my car through the car wash, and by the time I’m down the street, it’s covered again by a thin blanket of fine earth and debris. The atmosphere is so thick with nature’s own pollution that we are perpetually clearing our throats, coughing, blowing our noses, and sleeping fitfully at night for lack of breath.

The sun is a cruel friend, playing some sick practical joke on us. He kills with feigned kindness, extending warmth with one hand and thirst with the other. Low and brilliant in the sky, he illuminates the autumn leaves, and we admire their spectacular beauty. But we are lulled into forgetting that this is, in reality, a funeral home elegance, a ceremonial dressing-up before gray winter skies swallow up all color. The whole world is dying of thirst.

Israel spent forty years wandering in a desert wilderness. I can’t imagine. How parched can one get?

O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water. (Ps 63:1, NLT)

Lethargy must be overcome in these circumstances. It would be so easy to stay inside, breathe only conditioned air, savor a cold drink, and shut out the dry, dusty world. Some, for health reasons, must do so. For others like me, however, it is a day long fight against the noontime demon. Day after day.

In the words of those great theologians, the Temptations, I wish it would rain.

16 thoughts on “Drought”

  1. We haven’t had a good day of rain where I live for over two months.

    A week ago, we in SoCal just had our FIRST “good day of rain” in close to TEN MONTHS. The sort of drought described is normal for the dry season out here. (Our wet season corresponds to what you call “Winter”.)

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  4. Here in SK, on the other hand, we’ve had our highest rainfall ever. Crops are ruined – sloughs appeared all over fields, the ground stayed wet, combines sank into the mud, the Trans Canada-highway got damaged (lost over a km near Maple Creek earlier this season) and pests proliferated. By God’s grace we’re having a warm autumn, which means that the ground has finally dried out enough, so that harversting can happen.

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  6. Unfortunately, a lot of crops have been ruined, and what’s done is done. Getting rain right now is too late in many areas. How awful!! Perhaps we could also pray for farmers and their families whose livlihood DEPENDS on their crops. May they be able to recover financially over the winter, and be blessed with a promising planting season next year!

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  7. Damaris — it was your Herbert poem that made me think of Hopkins!

    Our literary minds are running on parallel tracks, converging magically in the limitless ether.

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  9. Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
    With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
    Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
    Disappointment all I endeavour end?
    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
    How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
    Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
    Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
    Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
    Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
    With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
    Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
    Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
    Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

    –Gerard Manley Hopkins

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  11. Here in N.C. we were behind about 4 months rainfall–then we caught up in 4 or 5 days! Just wish the blessing had been spread out a little.

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  14. Who would have thought my shriveled heart
    Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
    Quite under ground; as flowers depart
    To feed their mother-root, when they have blown;
    Where they together
    All the hard weather,
    Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

    These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
    Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
    And up to heaven in an hour;
    Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
    We say amiss,
    This or that is:
    Thy word is all, if we could spell.

    And now in age I bud again,
    After so many deaths I live and write;
    I once more smell the dew and rain,
    And relish versing: O my only Light,
    It cannot be
    That I am he
    On whom thy tempests fell all night!

    selections from “The Flower” by George Herbert

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  15. I will definitely pray for rain, Chaplain Mike!

    Also, Chaplain Mike, have you heard of the upcoming documentary, “Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer?”

    It’s been garnering a lot of attention lately, and I thought you may want to check it out!

    You can learn more by visiting this website: http://www.mysteriesofthejesusprayer.com/

    I’ve found the makers of the film to be very responsive to my inquiries! You can contact them at: friends@mysteriesofthejesusprayer.com

    Thank you!

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