Rain Reflections: Thoughts on our nature and God's grace

Ever sat in the rain and let the beauty and mystery that it represents soak into your heart and mind? Try it sometime, reflect and let what you’re learning about God be seen in His creation. Our God’s character is imprinted in every part of our world, fallen though it is. This morning, as I sat on my front step, droplets splashing up on my feet, I couldn’t help but think about the relationship between the nature of our world, and its need for rain. If you think about it, everything in our world is headed towards death. It is a world that consumes, a world of selfishness. You go without rain for a time and everything starts to look and feel desperate. The grass yellows, the ground cracks, the creeks and rivers start to look pathetic and thirsty, and people who live in an area without rain start to reflect the desperation of the world around them. As a farmer’s son, I have seen the depression and frustration, the despair of being able to do nothing to change the outlook of a crop’s fruitfulness. Rain, then, is a grace upon this world, a life-giving and sustaining force. Man tries to capture the ability to bring life, by bottling up this grace when it comes inside water towers, to draw it from wells, springs, and in our area, deep underground aquifers. However, we never produce it. Rain is bestowed on our world by God, and it brings a deeper relief that you can see on the surface. It does more than what can be seen on the surface, more than quenching thirst, washing clean, changing landscapes, softening the earth. It allows growth, it helps the world re-engage with its purposes, with producing fruit, and it brings a relief that is palpable. The smell of the world after a rain is stuck deep within us all as a refreshing scent. The feel of the air is new. Even the people affected take on a new posture and outlook during and after a good rain. It slows us down, makes us give thanks, and even makes us sleep better. Our world, and our humanity is broken. We are constantly consuming, headed towards an end where we are used up. Man cannot bring life, no matter how hard we try. The life-span cap that God gave in Genesis hasn’t been broken, and it never will be no matter how hard the medical community works. We, like our world are fundamentally unable to change our predicament. Helpless, broken, and headed towards death. God’s grace on the other hand, is like rain upon the earth. It isn’t produced by our actions. It is from a source uncontrollable, and it falls upon all of us, whether we are good, bad, or ugly. Its power is unfathomable, as unknowable as if one were to try to count the drops of rain that make up a shower. Able to move landscapes, change cultures, bring relief. God’s grace through Jesus Christ does that. However, God’s grace, in all of its bounty, is more powerful than rain could ever hope to be. To make rain, a wonderful grace that powerfully changes our world, God simply created the world and its systems. Every time it rains throughout the world, God doesn’t have to sit down and have a planning meeting, expend resources, and go into action. He spoke it into existence and the grace keeps coming. Sending Jesus on the other hand took His implicit action, a willing and costly sacrifice, something that He did not want to give up. However, God saw us as worth the cost, attributed worth to us as a gift, not because of anything we did, and sent a grace incomparable to us through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of His only begotten Son. What grass puts up an umbrella? What creek lays sandbags to prevent itself from being filled? What sort of foolishness would it be for us to deny the grace of God in our lives in order to embrace the onset of our death and demise? Somehow, because of sin, we are willing to shut out God’s grace far too often, instead choosing our own ways, which are never life-giving or fulfilling. Our nature is depraved, and in need of God’s pervasive, powerful, unrelenting grace. What a blessing the rain is, and how much more is the blessing of God’s grace upon our world, and upon us? Today, let’s have open eyes and hearts to God’s grace, and live in a posture of thankfulness just as farmers do after a hearty rainfall upon their crops. God’s grace is better than rain.