Wet

Woke up to a dripping landscape out my window. The sound of water splashing from the sky onto the earth, shrubs, cars, puddles, windows (clean or otherwise!) below. 

I stood in the prayer alcove, as usual, gazing at God’s world, enjoying the changes despite the harbinger they are of winter, appreciating the vibrant green. It is only that colour because of the rain falling from the sky. I come from a drought-prone patch and so I appreciate the shocking hue of green which to me shouts life.

As much as I have loved the clear blue skies and balmy temps we have enjoyed for a few weeks, when I went to the road verge to pick brambles I was disappointed at their meagre size. No plump berries. Just little hard balls of colour. Not enough refreshment from above.

When I worked in the rasp patch the other day, I was surprised at how dry the earth was. I developed an out-of-season sneezing fit of hay fever due to the flowering grass – it shouldn’t be flowering in October! So the rasp canes which I moved should be drinking in this moisture this morning, and I will hope again for next year’s crop.

I guess there are a few lessons to be drawn from this wet day. Most of them obvious. One I haven’t mentioned, though, is that because the sky is a uniform grey and the air is unremittingly moist, I am set free from the urge to get outside and tidy the garden before winter. Instead I can hunker down and work on some writing.

Change. Only God never changes. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. But as for everything else, there is a rhythm of change which is both welcome and feared. (Who wants to grow old?) 

Well, nobody wants to grow old of course, but the climax of the piece, the hope of every believing Christian, is that we don’t stay old, but are born again into the Kingdom which never ends.  A heart full of gratitude to Jesus for his work on the cross.