The Weight of the Blessing

The early morning rain outside the window of my Arizona desert home is soothing. The heavens have opened and the sound of it is like laughter - full of abandon and contagiously joyful. From the warmth of my bed I watch the limbs of trees bow under the weight of the blessing. I recently returned to the desert from our home on the Southern tip of Africa. There I saw the rain too. After years of drought that had brought the city to within days of no water, the rain came. And came. And came. Not one person did I hear complain of the unending wet. The rivers flowed and the dams filled and grown men walked barefoot in the puddles.

From my bed I watch the rivulets run down the windowpane and I think of rivers of living water. I think of Jesus and of drinking of him and of never thirsting again.

Our souls long for the rain that soaks deep and brings refreshing to forgotten seeds planted long ago. Alongside deeply rooted trees, grown to maturity, the God of all creation continuously germinates seeds in our life. There is always the new within the old, the hope within the constant, the young trickle within a flowing river.

Our God establishes us and he refreshes us. He leads us beside still waters but he also quenches us with fountains that spring forth; he both quiets our soul and disturbs us deeply.

Oh, that we would taste and see that the Lord is good.

“Blessed is the one ... whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.” – Psalm 1:1-3