Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Devotion October 2, 2019

Greetings!
I heard on the news 2 nights ago that it hand’t rained in our area for 39 days.  That is a long time.  So while they haven’t declared it an official drought yet, you can pretty well tell it has been a long time since we have had any type of precipitation and combined with our 2 months of 90+ degree weather the grass is brown and crunchy when you walk on it and the bushes are drooping and the still green leaves are falling from the trees ….. Guess you can say it is a hot and dry time of almost Biblical proportions - after all the magic number for everything in the Bible is 40 and 39 is almost 40!  I’m keeping my eyes to the sky for the plague of locusts…….
What this not quite a drought has done has made us a slave of the local news weather forecast as we listen and watch in hope there will be be a weather forecast where the chance of rain is more than 10% - after all this is North Carolina and there is a chance of a thunderstorm every day at 4pm regardless of the temperature or the drought or the lack of drought.  The only requirement is it be summer and North Carolina and every weather forecast has that 10% chance of a thunderstorm at 4pm in spite of the weather man saying 'there is no rain in sight'.  
While in past summers that 4pm rain has been pretty predictable.  It was pretty amazing to me after I moved here that this daily 4pm rain was really a thing…… Except for this summer where the idea of rain has pretty well gone the way of the unicorn.
So we continued to watch the weather forecasts and check the weather radar on our electronic devices and hope there was a glimmer of rain somewhere - and finally our quest for just the hint of rain came to fruition as the chance for rain when up to 40% - amazing how 40% can be so exiting  -  that is after all more than 10% which has been the constant across our weather map. 40% actuallt gives you some hope!  Indeed even on the weather radar on the electronic device there was a little splotch of green which indicated of rain and it was even traveling our direction - maybe we can get think about getting excited; but then we don't want our hopes dashed once again because the rain never shows up. 
The sky began to darken, there was a breeze rustling the leaves - now our hopes were really ramping up….. but no rain seemed to be coming.  Then the sun came out, then it clouded up, the sun came out, it clouded up so we began to lose that glimmer of hope that the green splotch from the weather radar was really going to pan out.
And then there was this sound; we hand’t heard it in a while so we weren’t sure it was real but it did resemble that noise we had once heard that sounded like rain dropping through the trees.  We looked out the window and with a squeal of delight we both said at the same time - “It’s raining!”.  We dropped everything and went outside to sit on our porch and enjoy the rain - but by the time we got there it was over.  Sad face with great disappointment.  
Maybe it will rain someday…..
There are days like this in our life.  Great droughts in our experience of God.  We feel separated and isolated and we are certain God has forgotten all about us  and will probably never come back to us again.  We feel dry and droopy and just like grass and bushes and trees that haven’t had any rain in 39 days.  
I know it will rain again and we can be without a single doubt that God has not forgotten us or forsaken us; we can be sure that God is still with us even when we feel like the spiritual side of our life has all dried up.  Have faith and know that God will continue to be there and will continue to work on returning our feelings of the Spirit’s presence and when we least expect it the knowledge of God’s presence will return.  You can be more sure of that than anything else in your life - even in the dark days, God is there - just like I know it will rain one day and I bet you that it will rain for several days and we will be saying:  “Geeze I’m tired of this rain!”
Amen!