Hey Church!

We saw some wild weather last week! Torrential rain, one random cool morning, then back to blazing hot, floods shutting down the city… some areas even saw hail! The rain we have been needing now for months finally fell last Wednesday, and all at once. Sadly, many homes and cars were flooded, causing significant damage and creating a nightmare of a mess. (As an aside: we have a flood relief program in place, if you would like to give or receive help: riovistachurch.com/floodrelief)

While I wish we could have measured the rainfall in inches instead of feet, I did have a moment of reflection after the storm… As our family walked out the front door one morning, our oldest son, Noah, observed, “The grass already needs to be mowed again!” (Ever since he took over the weekly lawn-mowing responsibility, he notices these things). I looked down at the grass and, sure enough, the lawn that had just been mowed four days prior was ready to be cut again. Not only that, but the blades were thicker and greener than I have seen them in a long time, and the dry patches had started to heal. 

How good is our God, that He would write death and resurrection into every blade of grass? 

Water itself is an emblem of death and life throughout scripture. The same sea that crushed the Pharoah’s army delivered and “baptized” the Israelites (1 Cor. 10:2). Some of you old-school-CCM lovers will recognize these lyrics: 

The same sun that melts the wax can harden clay
And the same rain that drowns the rat will grow the hay
And the mighty wind that knocks us down, 
If we lean into it will drive our fears away*

Are you in a wax-melting, rat-drowning, knocked-down season of life? If so, my little anecdote about greener grass might strike you as trite, or even offensive. But that valley you’re walking through is, by definition, a place where your perspective makes mountains appear insurmountable–”too lofty to attain,” to borrow David’s words. 

We are not expected to see the future, or disregard the heaviness we feel in the midst of life’s sorrows. But we are invited to believe that someone does see what we cannot (yet) see for ourselves: that this storm, devastating as it is, will surely subside, the waters will recede, and the rebuilding work will result in something new that could not have been forged in your soul by any other, less painful, means. 

The broken things God does not repair, He redeems. In other words, you may not get back what you lost, but you can count on Him to make that loss profitable for your good and His glory. You don’t have to feel the optimism in that statement while you are in the thick of it! But you can choose today to believe it and suffer as one who has hope. THAT is the gift of this faith we have: resurrection hope today, in every circumstance, and forever.