Drought

Sunday 10/19/2014 6:17 AM

California is in the middle of a drought. I have not watered my lawn at all this past summer and the grass is pretty much dead. There are mandatory water restrictions and farmers have also been restricted to the amount of water they can use. There has been unusually low rainfall and snowpack for the past few years and reservoirs all across the state are nearly empty.

My assigned scripture today included Joel 2:23ff, “Be glad, people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains because he is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. … Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other…” I also read Psalm 107:33ff, “He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there. He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle. They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest; he blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased.” Both of these passages talk about rain being sent to thirsty ground by a loving God. Our modern society denies the work of God in the cycles of drought and flooding. They attribute it to chance at best and, lately, they have attributed it to the work of man in the world, who has deposited too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

At first I thought perhaps God was letting me know that the drought in California would subside this year, that there would be plenty of rain. But then I thought about my personal life and my relationship with God over the past year or so and how I have been in a drought in that aspect of my life. Over the course of the past few days I have had meaningful devotional times. Maybe God is telling me that the drought I am experiencing in that regard is ending. A prayer by Peter Marshall is mine today, “Father, I am beginning to know how much I miss when I fail to talk to thee in prayer, and through prayer to receive into my life the strength and the guidance which only you can give. Forgive me for the pride and the presumption that make me continue to struggle to manage my own affairs to the exhaustion of my body, the weariness of my mind, the trial of my faith.”