Storms will come upon the earth.
May of 2015 was the wettest on record for much of Texas. The rains came at first, a welcome relief to a years-long drought. The lakes began to fill. Then the rains came again, three inches in one night, then four the next night. Soon streets began to flood, and still the rains came. Houses in the Hill Country near San Antonio washed away. Airports in Houston shut down because the city was underwater.
Texas longed for the sun.
Finally, as May turned to June, the clouds evaporated beneath the breaking rays of the sun, and Texans could breathe with relief. The wrenching power of the storms had broken, and the land could begin to dry.
Are we in the wettest season we’ve ever experienced spiritually? Are our storm drains clogged, our safe places washed away, and our paths underwater?
Do we long for the sun?
Ezra 9:9 speaks to our situation.
“For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.”
If the storms hadn’t come to Texas, people would have suffered. Man-made lakes designed to buffer the effects of Texas’ erratic rainfall had begun to run dry. The Central Texas town of Spicewood had already resorted to trucking in water when its wells failed in 2012. Groesbeck near Waco built a seven-mile pipeline to maintain a water supply for its citizens.
At that time, the drought had barely gotten underway. Then it got worse.
And still, we find God loves us, and he sends the rains. The same is true in our spiritual lives. We face times of sun, and then the sun begins to scorch us. When the clouds bring the rains, we’re grateful until the water rises around us. At those times, the return of the sun is the only thing that can bring us relief.
Ezra says it best when he describes the touch of God as a “reviving.”
Whether the hand of God comes as rain in the drought, or sun in the storm, he is always there to give us relief when we feel the world can’t get any worse. He may shower us with the rain, or he may provide us the sun, but it’ll be just what we need when it breaks across the heavens.
It will become the reviving we desire in our desperate time of desolation.
God is the light that leads us from the darkness of our despair into his eternal glory once again.
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Originally Published 9-25-15