“Oh Lord, I need an answer,
Give it to me now, I pray!
My life feels like a desert,
What I want is lots of rain!”
The answer comes, as raindrops fall.
The parched ground now is wet.
But soon relief turns into moans,
How quickly we forget!
“Oh brother!
What a bother
‘Tis to wear this old raincoat!
If this downpour doesn’t stop soon
I can see I’ll need a boat!”
The problem is we fail to see
In God our needs are met.
If you ask Him now to break a drought
Stand by, ‘cause you’ll get wet!
~ Debbie Porter ~
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“UNFORTUNATELY?”
My voice rose slightly with incredulousness at what I’d just heard. For a moment my hands stopped their task of washing, and lay still amidst the froth, bubbles and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink as I tried to comprehend the incomprehensible.
“Unfortunately?” I repeated, still shaking my head in disbelief. “Can you believe she just said that?”
Steve had been washing his hands in the bathroom at the time, but his response made it clear that he’d heard the same ridiculous comment.
“I know, it’s unbelievable isn’t it?”
With that, he headed back to his favourite recliner armchair to finish watching the 7 pm news.
Still muttering to the soap bubbles, dishes and now empty room, I added, “Honestly, I wish some people would think before they open their mouths!”
Who would have thought that an announcement about the weather would ever have the power to make me so riled!
So what did the newsreader say that managed to elicit such a heated response from my normally easy going self? Well, after just two days of patchy rain and overcast skies in Sydney, she was unwise enough to say, “And there’ll be some showers again on Monday, unfortunately.”
There was that word – “unfortunately”. Surely an unscripted addition by the announcer herself, that must have left a large number of Sydneysiders reacting in a similar fashion to myself.
What made it worse was the fact that only a week before, this same news presenter would have most likely been using the exact same word to express her concern for the seemingly endless drought that’s held so much of Australia in its grip over the last year or so.
To be honest, pre drought and water restrictions, I probably would have wholeheartedly agreed with her comment about the depressing state of another day of rain. However, that was then, and this is now.
The graphic television images of dying cattle and sheep, together with the sight of fields left fallow or full of withered and ruined crops, are enough to ensure that my response to the prospect of ongoing rain will be a joyful “hallelujah”, rather than a mournful “unfortunately”.
As much as I don’t enjoy days of grey skies and rain, I know that right here and now, there is no other solution to the serious water shortages this country is experiencing. The city of Sydney is probably one of the least affected areas, and yet the reality is that even here it will take approximately six weeks of good rain over the catchment area before our dams and reservoirs are back to capacity.
That’s six full weeks – and yet the complaining started after just two slightly dreary days!
Given our preferences, most of us would probably opt for sunshine and blue skies any day, because quite frankly, rain does have a habit of cramping our style and getting in the way of the smooth running of everyday life.
I mean when you think about it, rain makes moving around so much harder, particularly if you have to get groceries or children into a car, while sharing one minuscule umbrella in a deluge! (Been there, done that!)
It also often causes our plans and activities to be disrupted, postponed, or even cancelled. Sporting events, picnics, trips to the beach, garden weddings and visits to zoos or amusement parks are regular casualties when those rain clouds sweep into town.
Add to that the fact that there really is such a thing as the “rainy day blues”, and you have more than a few reasons why the thought of another day in the wet would bring a less than enthusiastic response.
However, it’s no good praying for the long, dry spell to break, only to get fed up and annoyed when the rain eventually arrives and decides to stick around.
The first raindrop that splashes to the ground (or on our nice, clean car) doesn’t mean that the drought is over. It just means that the long process of breaking has begun.
The same is often true when it comes to our lives.
There are times when we pray for something to be broken from our life, and the answer comes immediately and powerfully. The transformation happens in one fell swoop of God’s gracious hand, and we’re left rejoicing.
If you’re like me, you really love it when things happen that way, but for the most part it’s not quite that straight forward. More often the case is that we pray for something to be broken from our life, and at that moment God begins the process of breaking – and that process may take time and, quite possibly, won’t go down in our personal history as being the most pleasant of experiences!
I don’t presume to know the mind of God, and yet I do believe that there are benefits from experiencing a breaking process, rather than a “quick fix” snap. Unquestionably, if God is the One who brings both about, then the results will be exactly as they should be. Yet, when He does allow us to go through a process on the road to progress, there will usually be the added dimension of work carried out on both our character and level of faith.
There’s also the fact that when we’ve had to battle long and hard to receive a breakthrough, we’re far more likely to value and work at maintaining the end result.
Without question, the biggest challenge we all face as we go through these long processes on the road to breakthrough, is to stay focused on God’s promises and faithfulness, and to not look back and grumble.
Not surprisingly, grumbling is probably the most common reaction when those “rain drops” of breaking just keep falling and the blue skies of breakthrough seem nowhere in sight! In fact, it’s been happening for thousands of years, and we probably find the best illustrations of this attitude in the book of Exodus. The following passage is just one such example:
“The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."
~ Exodus 16:1-3 NIV ~
How quickly we forget! The Israelites had been in bondage in Egypt for at least two hundred years, and during those long, hard years of slavery they had called out to the Lord to be delivered.
When their first steps to freedom came, they rejoiced and set out without hesitation, taking with them some of the wealth of those who had held them captive. They saw mighty signs of God’s protection and provision, and yet, every time things seemed to hit a dry patch, they fell back into complaining and unfavourably comparing the hardships encountered along the way, with the nightmare that had been their lives under bondage.
All the while, forgetting how far the Lord had already brought them, and the fact that every step was moving them closer to their complete deliverance and freedom.
So when we cry out to God to rescue us in our days of physical, emotional and spiritual drought, we need to remember that every “raindrop” is heaven sent, and in time will cause those dry places of the soul to overflow with the rivers of His blessing!
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"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
~ Romans 8:28 NIV ~
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Copyright © 2003 by Debbie Porter