My mother reminded me recently that Harold Taft, the wonderful weatherman I grew up watching on our local news, used to say, “The only cure for a drought is a flood.”
Yes, our years-long drought is “cured” by the wettest May we’ve seen. Our small town has logged about 12 inches this month alone (over 23 inches since January 1!)–which is less than other nearby areas. And while the lake that lives half a block from my house is beautifully full for the first time in several years, I’m so officially over the rain.
It’s not just the standing water and the flash flooding that are making life more difficult. It’s also the gray, cloudy days. The unusual humidity. The mud. I’m sick of the smell of wet dog, white-knuckled car trips, and harried grocery store runs when the radar shows a clear patch over our town. I’m done with waking in the night to the crash of thunder and emergency alerts for the possibility of tornados or hail or severe winds or flash flooding. But most of all I’m heartbroken over so much destruction of lives and property. Rain. So lovely in normal amounts. So devastating when it comes in a deluge–or not at all.
I do confess that weather situations like this remind me that God’s power is so far beyond my ken. The words to “How Great Thou Art” often play through my head:
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed:
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art! How great thou art!
As I look around now, in the midst of all the wetness, I see the beauty that has arisen from the battering of water. Grass and shrubs and trees have turned a lovely shade of green. Lakes shimmer full in the glimpses of sunlight. But I’m still ready to be done with precipitation. I’m ready for sunshine (although I don’t look forward to the extreme heat it will bring). I’m ready to watch my nieces play softball and my nephew play baseball. (The number of rainouts has been staggering!) I’m ready to welcome the lazy days of summer. Perhaps it’s just a smidgen of the same longing Noah and his family felt as they knew their time on the ark was coming to an end. That moment of remembering God sees. And that He is near. That after the deluge, after the storm, the sun will, indeed, appear once more.