The First Drop of Rain Page 9

  My expectations diminish the possibilities of my life—but my sense of expectancy expands them. At any moment, I may find myself immersed in something just as grand and beyond my comprehension and orchestration as that front-row seat for a rain of stars.

  to ponder

  When have your expectations led to a deep sense of disappointment? What relationships or events seem to trigger high expectations for you?

  When have you experienced the joy of expectancy, an event or relationship free of any preconceived expectations that turned out to be wonderful?

  timing is everything

  I rush out as I am and walk the street/with my hair down, so.

  What shall we do to-morrow?/ What shall we ever do?

  T.S. Eliot

  Matthew tells the story of when Jesus was in conversation with some Pharisees and Sadducees. They were pressing Jesus to prove himself; they were looking for a way to reveal how preposterous it was that he claimed to be the son of God. Jesus, quoting this ancient saying, scolded them, saying, “You find it easy enough to forecast the weather—why can’t you read the signs of the times?” He was angry, and he “turned on his heel and walked away” (Matthew 16:3–4).

  It has long been common practice to read the sky to anticipate the weather. With the kind of intuition that comes from experience, much can be discerned from subtle hints. The colors of the sky at sunrise and sunset indicate the kind of weather moving toward us. During sunrise and sunset, the sun is low in the sky, and light is transmitted through the thickest part of the atmosphere, causing a red color which comes from moisture particles and dust suspended in the air. Thus, a red sky at night hints at stable, high-pressure air moving toward the west—basically good weather. A red sky in the morning may reveal a rain storm system moving east because of lower air pressure. For people whose livelihood depended on the weather, studying the heavens for clues was a necessary discipline.

  Jesus addresses those whose livelihood depended on studying the heavens in a slightly different way. He is angry because they are asking for something more than what they see in him. This Messiah, God’s son, is revealing the vivid colors of a delightful kingdom, yet the Pharisees and Sadducees are asking for something more. Jesus says, “An evil and wanton generation is always wanting signs and wonders” (verse 4).

  Spiritual discernment, or even the awareness that springs from keen human observation, has never been my gift. I can count the moments of deep spiritual discernment in my life on one hand. One of those moments five years ago led to the formation of a small group of women.

  How often have I lain

  beneath rain on a strange roof,

  thinking of home.

  William Faulkner

  I felt called by God to begin a group that came to be called “Friday Friends.” This group of seven women, whose ages and stages span more than two decades, has been an amazing experience. We have laughed and cried and engaged in some of the most expansive conversations and intimate moments I have ever shared. We have felt, collectively, God’s activity in our midst. We feel a kind of reverence for the way God put together such an unlikely, unsuspecting collection of women for what seem to be his purposes.

  One by one, each of us has been engaged in major personal transitions. My friend Joy recently relocated to Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jim, and their youngest child. Jim was recently hired away from his role with the Seattle Seahawks as quarterback coach and installed as head coach of the Washington Redskins. Joy’s life has moved to a level of high visibility that the rest of us marvel at—dinners with ambassadors and celebrities, civic responsibilities, and symbolic events demanding her presence, even as she attempts to homeschool her son and maintain a grounded family life.

  In a strange and wonderful symmetry, my friend Sandy also moved to Washington, D.C., at almost exactly the same time as Joy. They have kept the rest of us entertained with stories of getting lost at the Pentagon while trying to find Costco.

  Tami, the youngest member of our group and the third transition-maker from our dwindling group of seven women, recently moved with her husband and young sons to Colorado. Family and dear friends, along with the natural beauty of that place, wooed them. The timing was unexpected, but when the opportunity presented itself, they felt the nudge and acted.

  Each one of these dear friends had been actively seeking God’s purpose and direction in the midst of transition. The process has heightened my own level of awareness. I have joined with them in prayers for discernment and wisdom as we read the heavens while resisting the temptation to ask for signs and wonders.

  The transitions of these dear friends have created ripple effects in my life. A group that I’ve treasured has come to a place of closure. How should I respond to this? What weather is coming? I am studying the heavens these days, straining against my natural obliviousness.

  I told Tami that Seattle feels emptier now. I used to live and move with the awareness that this was a city full to overflowing with a network of friends who would halt their lives at a moment’s notice to take a call from me, mobilize in a crisis, or drop in unexpectedly for a rich conversation. It’s amazing how social a group of seven women can be. Now we are linked by email and cell phones and reunion gatherings, but the weather is shifting, and I’m trying hard to read the forecast.

  What does God want me to do with the space in my soul opened by these transitions? What is God calling for now?

  I know this: While I pray with my eyes closed and hands folded, I don’t want to miss the revealed presence and purpose of God that already fills the heavens above me.

  to ponder

  Have you experienced a time of deep spiritual discernment in your life? What specifically did you sense God revealing to you?

  Are there areas in your life now where you feel a lack of clarity or discernment? What are you seeking to better understand?

  sprinkled grass

  And dry grass singing.

  T.S. Eliot

  Just before Moses died, while the people of Israel were on the precipice of their Promised Land, God instructed Moses to copy down a song and help the people learn it by heart. Learning by heart requires, above all, repetition. If you’ve ever caught yourself singing the ABC song while reaching for the order of a letter, you don’t need to be convinced that music reaches into the recesses of our being. Singing, like smelling, sets God’s goodness deep into our hearts.

  Just before graduating from preschool, my five-year-old son Jackson successfully learned a Japanese version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” that is now his favorite party trick. He delights in the enthusiastic applause and words of praise that make his eyes shine, and is fairly indiscriminate about his audience.

  Once a song is successfully committed to our long-term memory, with the slightest trigger it has a way of slipping in and out of our conscious mind (I often sing in Japanese while exercising or doing laundry). It becomes a part of the fiber of our being.

  Which is why God says to Moses, “This song will be … a witness to who they are” (Deuteronomy 31:19–21). God knew well that the Israelites would grow comfortable in the land flowing with milk and honey and they would abandon the God who gifted them with it. God told Moses the song would serve as a witness to them about “what went wrong” when things fell apart. Deuteronomy records the words of this incredible song—God’s story told as the Song of Moses. It framed a relationship and told a truth so deep that God wanted it not just to be heard, not just to be understood, not just to be known and familiar, but to be learned by heart, contained deep and mysteriously in the recesses of the people’s hearts and minds and souls for generations to come.

  Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative, in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

  T.S. Eliot

  After calling on the heavens to “listen” and requesting the earth’s “attention,” the song begins, “My teaching, let it fall like a gen
tle rain, my words arrive like morning dew, Like a sprinkling rain on new grass, like spring showers on the garden.” The song goes on to say, “God himself took charge of his people, … He found him out in the wilderness, in an empty, windswept wasteland. He threw his arms around him, lavished attention on him, guarding him as the apple of his eye.” Finally, the song asks, “Do you see it now? Do you see that I’m the one? Do you see that there’s no other god beside me? I bring death and I give life, I wound and I heal—there is no getting away from or around me! I raise my hand in solemn oath; I say, ‘I’m always around’ ” (Deuteronomy 32:39).

  I am stunned as I begin to read the imagery of the wasteland and the rain. I think back to a conversation Moses had with God, recounted in Exodus at the beginning of this journey toward the Promised Land, a journey that would span decades and break Moses so deeply that he would be allowed to see the Promised Land only from a distance. The conversation takes place in a tent called the “Tent of Meeting,” set apart from the camp. It was a place where any seeker of God could go.

  The Bible tells us that when Moses walked toward the tent, all of the men of Israel, one by one, would take their position at the entrance to their own tents and stand respectfully with their eyes on him until he had entered the Tent of Meeting. At first, the image is of soldiers standing at attention for their commander passing by. But as the story unfolds, we begin to see that the men are waiting for the Pillar of Cloud that would hover over the tent, signaling the presence of God. At this the men would bow low in worship, in unison, each at the threshold of their own tent. It was here, the Bible says, that God “spoke with Moses face-to-face, as neighbors speak to one another” (Exodus 33:11).

  In one of these conversations, Moses says, “Look, you tell me, ‘Lead this people,’ but you don’t let me know whom you’re going to send with me. You tell me, ‘I know you well and you are special to me.’ If I am so special to you, let me in on your plans. That way, I will continue being special to you. Don’t forget, this is your people, your responsibility.’ ”

  God’s response to that is, “My presence will go with you. I’ll see the journey to the end” (Exodus 33:12–14).

  That answer is what those of us who are lost in our own empty windswept wastelands most need to hear, no matter the questions we are asking or the journey we are on.

  After the death of Moses, it was to Joshua that God continued to say, “Strength! Courage! … Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take” (Joshua 1:7, 9).

  Here we are, making our way through a modern wasteland. A couple I know lost their four-year-old boy to leukemia. Months later, in the doctor’s office during a routine prenatal checkup for a surprise pregnancy, they were told the mother may have a cancerous tumor. The young husband is incapable of uttering a single prayer. His anger is so fierce that it is boiling within him.

  Those of us who know the family are standing in the gap, hoping somehow to carry him with our prayers across this chasm. We beg for God’s presence to be known as rain in this wasteland. We struggle to set the truth deep within our hearts that God promises to “see this journey to the end.” The words wind themselves unbidden through our thoughts, surfacing as pools of water within.

  to ponder

  Have you ever prayed like Moses did (or wanted to), “If I’m so special to you, let me in on your plans”? What kind of response did you sense from God?

  What have you “learned by heart” that has been a point of strength or provided direction or comfort for you in a time of need?

  Presence

  Moses knelt

  Barefoot on the dry ground

  Watching the bush

  Flicker like a candle

  Against the horizon

  of his hidden life.

  Your presence—

  Seeking, Blazing, Holy.

  Eventually,

  Even his own face

  Carried your glow.

  Even still,

  He had his moments,

  His doubts, his fears—

  He had to somehow

  Know

  You promised

  Not to go.

  I take your promise

  To Moses

  And make it mine.

  Can you make me holy?

  Will I ever shine?

  moonbow

  In the faint moonlight, the grass singing.

  T.S. Eliot

  My aunt Jill once witnessed a rainbow in the night sky. She and her closest friend were moving my mother across the country. The trip was rigorous, with poor weather, rental truck breakdowns, and exhausting hours. The appearance of the rainbow in the night sky filled them with a sense of awe and a much needed shot of adrenaline to complete the trip.

  Astonished by the sight, they decided to investigate. Was there really such a thing or had they somehow imagined it? Moonbows, or lunar rainbows, are a rare—but very real—occurrence. The necessary conditions are extraordinary. The sky must be very dark, the moon must be at its brightest, and it must be hanging unusually low in the sky. Rain must be falling opposite the moon. On exactly such a night, the moonbow became for Aunt Jill a symbol of hope.

  I’m thinking about the moonbow because I desperately need hope. Yesterday my dear friend Kathy received the dreaded news—her cancer has returned. This aggressive, small-cell lung cancer has moved into her breast. We wept together over the phone, she in Kansas City and I in Seattle.

  Kathy is scared, desperate to live, to see her ten-year-old daughter become a woman, and to somehow come to terms with God’s place in this darkness. This recurrence is after a brutal year and a half of the most aggressive chemo and radiation possible—this is the darkest of dark nights.

  I’ve been praying almost without ceasing ever since. For God’s appearing. For the brightness of a full moon. For this beating, blinding cancerous storm to be headed in just the right direction—away from the bright light so that a lunar bow breaks across Kathy’s field of vision in such astonishing colors that she cannot help but hope. I pray that in every possible way God’s presence will be confirmed to her, that she will be enveloped in God’s deepest healing and help.

  While lunar rainbows are rare, all rainbows capture our attention. Rainbows aren’t possible without rain. Each drop of rain acts as a prism and mirror that refracts sunlight into every color of the spectrum.

  I can only wonder at the amazement Noah might have felt. Did the arc of the rainbow—the mirror image of the ark of obedience Noah built—drive home the message of God’s provision?

  Kathy’s ark of obedience is built of chemotherapy and radiation. Would that her flood were only forty days! God of dark and light, send her a sign and a seal of your presence and promise. Make your love visible in the blackest of nights.

  to ponder

  Have you ever received a sign of hope in a very dark time? What was it and how did it impact you?

  Can you think of a person who may need your prayers or acts of service to provide the hope they need to survive a dark night?

  magic moment

  By this, and this only, we have existed

  Which is not to be found in our obituaries.

  T.S. Eliot

  Sometimes I feel invisible, like no one sees me. Occasionally, that’s a good thing. It gives me space. It’s not that I’m being actively ignored or given the cold shoulder. It’s just that the demands of life are commanding the full attention of the people closest to me.

  Left to myself, these can become moments of creativity. Without the high level of accountability usually built in to married life, for instance, I might walk into the kitchen and start tinkering around, pulling dusty cookbooks off the shelf or inventing my own delicacy. If I end up dumping the finished product down the drain and eating Cheerios for dinner, no one is disrupted.

  But sometimes being invisible means being deeply lonely. Since my husband is a writer, I have walked through many such seasons in our marriage. Once a n
ew book project is under way—after the typical stops and starts while he wrestles with the outline, and after the main message crystallizes—he goes into production mode. I have never seen a person who is able to focus with more laser intensity than Les. He sequesters himself in his study, emerging only when a break occurs in his creative f low. These breaks aren’t based on the demands of convention like mealtimes and bedtimes. He often writes through the night, falling into bed exhausted but satisfied at about the time my morning alarm is sounding.

  Les scarcely realizes how separate our lives become. He is so consumed with his project, so fully engaged by its demands, that his awareness of life around him recedes. The rest of us, still living life as usual, are much more deeply aware of his absence than he is of ours. In the early days of our marriage and his writing career, these times would leave me wounded and lonely.