With the much needed rain the Lord has blessed us with the past couple of days, I thought it would be great to repost this blog entry first done in 2008.
My how the kids have grown from this picture...
Almost every morning you can find Kaylyn checking the weather on the computer after breakfast. I will pull up the site and she will tell us what if it is going to rain or not. Lord-willing. When she sees it is in the forecast to rain in 5 days, she will countdown to the day when we will have a rainy day. And if it shows thunderstorms, she anticipates the day even more.
So, when we wake up to a dark, cloudy morning, with rain falling, it is an exciting day. We love the beautiful rain God gives us. I will often see my children standing near a window, gazing out, discussing how God is watering our grass and flowers for us.
Let me ask you. Do you enjoy the rain? When you awake in the morning and see rain falling down, do you murmur what a bad day it is? Have you ever considered how amazing rain can be? The glory it brings to God?
I would like to share the following meditation by John Piper about rain. It is lengthy, but please read all of it...it will make of you think of rain in a way you have may not have considered and known before.
The Great Work of God:Rain
Meditation on Job 5:8-10
But as for me, I would seek God,
And I would place my cause before God;
Who does great and unsearchable things,
Wonders without number.
He gives rain on the earth,
And sends water on the fields.
If you said to someone: "My God great and unsearchable things; He does wonders without number," and they responded, "Really? Like what?" would you say, " Like rain"? When I read these verses from Job recently, I felt, at first, the way I did on hearing some bad poetry that went something like this: "Let me suffer, let me die, just to win your hand, and even walk across the land?" Even? I would suffer and die to have your hand, and even walk across the land? As if walking across the land were more sacrificial than dying? This sounded to me like a joke.
But Job is not joking. "God does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number. He gives rain on the earth." In Job's mind rain really is one of the great, unsearchable wonders that God does. So when I read this a few weeks ago, I resolved not to treat it as meaningless pop musical lyrics. I decided to have a conversation with myself ( Which is what I mean by meditation).
Is rain a great and unsearchable wonder wrought by God? Picture yourself as a farmer in the Near East, far from any lake or stream. A few wells keep the family and animals supplied with water. But if the crops are to grow and the family is to be fed from month to month, water has to come from another source on the fields. From where?
Well, the sky. The sky? Water will come out of the clear blue sky? Well, not exactly. Water will have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea over several hundred miles, and then be poured out on the fields from the sky. Carried? How much does it weigh? Well, if one inch of rain falls on one square mile of farmland during the night, that would be 2,323,200 cubic feet of water, which is 17,377,536 gallons, which is 144,735,360 pounds of water.
That's heavy. So how does it get up in the sky and stay there if it's so heavy? Well, it gets up there by evaporation. Really? That's a nice word. What's it mean? It means the water stops being water for a while so it can go up and not down. I see. Then how does it get down? Well, condensation happens.
What's that? The water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust particles between .00001 and .0001 centimeters wide. That's small.
What about the salt? Salt? Yes, the Mediterranean Sea is saltwater. That would kill the crops. What about the salt? Well, the salt has to be taken out. Oh. So the sky picks up millions of pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, carries the water ( or whatever it is, when it is not water) for three hundred miles, and then dumps it (now turned into water again) on the farm?
Well, it doesn't dump it. If it dumped millions of pounds of water on the farm, the wheat would be crushed. So the sky dribbles the millions of pounds of water down in little drops. And they have to be big enough to fall one mile or so without evaporating, and small enough from crushing the wheat stalks.
How do all these microscopic specks of water that weigh millions of pounds get heavy enough to fall ( if that's the way to ask the question)? Well, it's called coalescence. What's that? It means specks of water start bumping into each other and join up and get bigger, and when they are big enough, they fall. Just like that? Well, not exactly, because they would just bounce off each other instead of joining up if there were no electric field present. What? Never mind. Take my word for it.
I think, instead, I will just take Job's word for it. I still don't see why drops ever get to the ground, because if they start falling as soon as they are heavier than the air, they would be to small not to evaporate on the way down. But if they wait to come down, what holds them up till they are big enough not to evaporate? Yes, I am sure there's a name for that too. But I am satisfied for now that, by any name, this is a great and unsearchable thing that God has done. I think I should be thankful-lots more thankful than I am.
Isn't rain amazing!?! As the rain continues to come down upon us this day down here in the south, may we meditate on God and His greatness in the rain.
To God Be the Glory!
This meditation was found in "Taste and See' by John Piper on pages 24-26.
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