El Niño

Wednesday 9/23/2015 4:23 AM

Yesterday Facebook reminded me of a picture I posted six years ago, shortly after I bought my motorcycle. In it I am holding my grandson, three-month old Trey, while sitting on my bike with a beautifully manicured, green lawn in the background. Today Trey is in first grade and losing teeth and my lawn is dead, and brown. Time marches on and things change.

Relationships change too. Flourishing romantic love stoked by a newly minted marriage can become passé after a few years of shared life and dull routine if it is not carefully tended and nourished. Intimacy with and fervor for God can soon give way to ennui when the busyness and cares of life interfere with the time needed for quiet reflection and meditation. Time marches on and things change.

Southern California is currently enduring a record-setting drought, which accounts for my dead, brown lawn. My relationship with God is also enduring a drought. My reservoir of joy has been drained and the excitement of wondering what God would do next has given way to a quiet resignation that things have changed and may never again be the same. My dead, brown lawn mirrors my feelings about intimacy with God at the moment.

My devotional theme this week is gratitude. It is hard to be thankful in the middle of a drought but my assigned reading for today gives some hope. Jeremiah 33:10-11 says, “This is what the Lord says: You say about this place, ‘It is a desolate waste, without people or animals.’ Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither people nor animals, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices of those who bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord, saying, ‘Give thanks to the Lord Almighty, for the Lord is good; his love endures forever.’ For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before, says the Lord.”

Meteorologists are hopeful that the current drought across California will be alleviated due to an extra strong marine condition know as El Niño. Rising ocean temperatures along the coastline portend a wetter than usual rainy season, giving hope to a break in the drought. I can also have hope with regard to the listlessness in my relationship with God. He has sent El Niño, his Son, to warm the surface of my cooling heart and to restore intimacy and joy. I will experience the sinusoidal variations of life but God remains faithful. That is reason enough for gratitude.