I'm sitting in the restaurant of a small but prosperous town. A floor to ceiling window separates me from the steady rain on the brick sidewalks only three or four feet away. Few things in nature, if any, soothe me more than rain. Even a pounding surf in front of one of the world's greatest ocean expanses cannot ease my mind as can simple raindrops pelting a street or soaking a field or rushing across window panes. Enjoying a gentle rain coupled with watching the faces of everyday people as they walk briskly under their umbrellas is what to others might be their Lotus Position.
As so often happens when I write a themed post like this, there is a radio playing and a song seems to address my very thoughts. So as I sit here taking in the summer rain right in front of me, the chorus of Fleetwood Mac's 1977 Dreams is barely discernible somewhere above my head, but I can make out each chorus which ends with the words...."when the rain washes you clean, you'll know, you'll know."
Could that be it...the reason I love rain so much...that it washes me clean? No, that concept has never entered my mind. Only the blood of Christ can wash one clean, and even the refreshing of a gentle rain cannot compare to the exhilaration of knowing that One has taken my sins upon himself, washing me clean in the eyes of the Father, and securing an eternal inheritance in heaven!
Somehow the rain frees me to meditate, as it does to multitudes of others I might add. As a younger man my meditation might have been on a young lady. In the Monsoons of Southeast Asia it might have been on my home back in Pittsburgh, and in my forties it might have been on raising our son to know Christ in a grossly secular world. Almost 37 years ago, on November 4th, 1979, the same day that Islamic radicals took American hostages in Tehran, I sat at my father's hospital bedside and watched as the heart monitor slowed and then stopped. I feel that same dread today as I sit by America's bedside and watch its pulse barely elicit a response. Therefore my meditation today, more often than not, is on the creeping demise of the constitutional republic of the United States of America...on our son's future...and your children's future.
Why can't others see this? I know the answer to that question. They themselves are in that hospital bed, drugged by the vanities of life, only semi-aware of their deathly state because the doctors have not told them and the preachers have not come to help them make sure their call and election and prepare them for the judgment to come. They are in denial. Their Bibles either stay closed, or open only for a sedentary Sunday School class lesson preceding an even more lethargic sermon void of the majesties of Christ and permeated with the stale aroma of cheap grace.
I don't like it when the rain stops. All that is left of my 'dreams' are puddles. The umbrellas close and I no longer have an excuse to just sit and watch. Some errand must be run or handyman job completed. Walking away I can no longer feel the cool rain on my skin verifying my existence, reassuring me of God's blessings on our crops, and offering me more time to meditate on the One who brings the rain. "
"Shower, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds pour down righteousness;
Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit,
And righteousness spring up with it.
I, the LORD, have created it." Isaiah 45:8
As so often happens when I write a themed post like this, there is a radio playing and a song seems to address my very thoughts. So as I sit here taking in the summer rain right in front of me, the chorus of Fleetwood Mac's 1977 Dreams is barely discernible somewhere above my head, but I can make out each chorus which ends with the words...."when the rain washes you clean, you'll know, you'll know."
Could that be it...the reason I love rain so much...that it washes me clean? No, that concept has never entered my mind. Only the blood of Christ can wash one clean, and even the refreshing of a gentle rain cannot compare to the exhilaration of knowing that One has taken my sins upon himself, washing me clean in the eyes of the Father, and securing an eternal inheritance in heaven!
Somehow the rain frees me to meditate, as it does to multitudes of others I might add. As a younger man my meditation might have been on a young lady. In the Monsoons of Southeast Asia it might have been on my home back in Pittsburgh, and in my forties it might have been on raising our son to know Christ in a grossly secular world. Almost 37 years ago, on November 4th, 1979, the same day that Islamic radicals took American hostages in Tehran, I sat at my father's hospital bedside and watched as the heart monitor slowed and then stopped. I feel that same dread today as I sit by America's bedside and watch its pulse barely elicit a response. Therefore my meditation today, more often than not, is on the creeping demise of the constitutional republic of the United States of America...on our son's future...and your children's future.
Why can't others see this? I know the answer to that question. They themselves are in that hospital bed, drugged by the vanities of life, only semi-aware of their deathly state because the doctors have not told them and the preachers have not come to help them make sure their call and election and prepare them for the judgment to come. They are in denial. Their Bibles either stay closed, or open only for a sedentary Sunday School class lesson preceding an even more lethargic sermon void of the majesties of Christ and permeated with the stale aroma of cheap grace.
I don't like it when the rain stops. All that is left of my 'dreams' are puddles. The umbrellas close and I no longer have an excuse to just sit and watch. Some errand must be run or handyman job completed. Walking away I can no longer feel the cool rain on my skin verifying my existence, reassuring me of God's blessings on our crops, and offering me more time to meditate on the One who brings the rain. "
"Shower, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds pour down righteousness;
Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit,
And righteousness spring up with it.
I, the LORD, have created it." Isaiah 45:8
