Wednesday, May 25, 2011

It's so dry...

See if this passage from Jeremiah sounds familiar:

“Judah mourns, her cities languish; they wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem. The nobles send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns but find no water. They return with their jars unfilled;
dismayed and despairing, they cover their heads. The ground is cracked because there is no rain in the land;
the farmers are dismayed and cover their heads. Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn because there is no grass. Wild donkeys stand on the barren heights and pant like jackals; their eyes fail for lack of food.”

The ground at my house is so dry I poured water on the flower beds yesterday, and it didn't make mud. We haven't had rain in more than a month, I'm told, and there isn't a great chance on the horizon. The grass is brown at both churches and in my backyard.

It is so dry that a couple of fish knocked on my front door last night and asked for a drink of water. It's so hot around here that I saw two trees chasing a dog. It's so hot that my cat Callie was chasing our dog Copper and they were both walking. It's so dry and hot that the birds around here have to use potholders to pull the earthworms out of the ground.

It's really dry. It's really hot. Honest.

What do we make of all this weather, then? Tornadoes have torn apart the midwest and parts of the south. Drought is destroying crops in Louisiana even as flooding from the Mississippi takes care of the rest.

Maybe, like someone said, the Rapture did come but none of us were worthy.

Jeremiah's prophecy was not just about drought, you see, but rather against the spiritual drought that brings about insincere prayer.

In this prophecy, two pictures of God emerge. One is the wrathful God who has had enough. The other is the merciful God who says just one chapter later in Jeremiah, "If you turn back, I will take you back, and you will stand before me."

God is a merciful God, and the rain of heaven is coming for those who turn back before it is way, way too late. Let it rain, O God, let it rain.

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