It has been bone dry here this spring. We’ve had a few snowstorms and a few thundershowers, but we’ve been missing that long, soaking rain that brings health to gardens and hope to farmers.

But it has finally happened. Buckets and buckets of rain coming down, filling every crack in the dry ground, welling up into spontaneous rivers and pooling into surprise lakes.

Sheets of rain blown sideways by the fierce wind.

I’m thankful it’s not snow.

But the parched ground needed this rain. Those with crops and gardens to tend needed this rain. The rest of us – we needed this rain too. We needed the green hills and growth that comes after a rainstorm.

This real-life example of the blessing of rain couldn’t have come at a better time. Earlier this week I was reading Isaiah 40:17-20 and it pierced my heart —

“The poor and needy search for water,
 but there is none;
 their tongues are parched with thirst.
But I the Lord will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

I will make rivers flow on barren heights,
 and springs within the valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
 and the parched ground into springs.

I will put in the desert
 the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.
I will set junipers in the wasteland,
 the fir and the cypress together,

so that people may see and know,
 may consider and understand,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
 that the Holy One of Israel has created it.”

Have you ever seen rain fall on dry land? The ground drinks the water up in an instant and within minutes it looks as if it the rain never fell in the first place. Imagine how much water it would take to make rivers flow on barren heights, springs grow in the valleys, pools of water fill the desert and turn the parched ground into springs? How much refreshing moisture it would take to make the wasteland teem with tall, strong, fragrant, wonderful life?

Only God can do this.

Only God can take our dry, brittle, dead hearts and flood them with the power of His Spirit, bringing new life where nothing else will grow.

Only God, the God who does not forsake, can answer the call of the spiritually thirsty, bringing refreshment that satisfies forever.

Someone needs to hear this today.

Someone needs to hear that God does not forsake us, even in the wasteland. He brings new life after the rain.

Only He can. Only He will.

Raindrops on leaves