Rain: It Feels like Redemption

It's not even 8 am, yet the sky is dark with thunder. It's been a long time since I've seen a storm like this morning's, which may explain why I, still clad in my pj's,  sit in my open, front doorway looking at this refreshing performance. The coolness of winds pulled down from the birthplace of rain, the power and splendor and majesty of lightning, the sudden explosion of preflashed (and thus should have been  expected) thunder like a rogue cymbal player in a tranquil sonata, the rejoicing of plants, arms lifted high in adoration-- a close first choice to the  second of curling up is a cozy bed and missing the full performance.

Terrazzo is harder than crossed legs, so I submit to the complaints from my overburdened ankles and retire to my reading chair after putting on a pot of coffee, to best digest this waking thought: rain is redemption.

The notion is not hard on some levels, especially given that last year was the worst drought in recorded history, thus the 10 inches of rain this month makes up for what was withheld previously. On that note this recent December's rains celebrated the birth of more than one savior. With this winter's precipitation comes the promise of s'mores at public campgrounds, the cessation of water rationing and the refilling of our civic water sources. The pine trees of Houston feel hope again, where last season they saw almost a half of their family members and friends perish for want.

Ruth is a beautiful story in the Hebrew scriptures about a young lass married into an orthodox family from a pagan background. She is loved and accepted, yet as she approaches that time in which most young women yearn for-- that chance to participate in life-giving-- she is cut off. Not only does her husband die, but so do the other men of his immediate family, what would be "husband-redeemers" who would step in and take on the new widow, siring children to continue the estate of the missing. With no better alternative, she follows her mother-in-law back to the lands of Israel, a pair of widows now strangers in an old land. Naomi has her old friends who can connect to her past, perhaps how people rediscover each other on Facebook thirty years after high school, yet she is stuck in her pain, mired in what she no longer has... broken vision. Then Ruth finds favor with a distant relative of her late husband. Boaz is an honorable man perhaps twice her age. Naomi moves out of self-pity and uses her cultural acuity to show Ruth how to invite Boaz into her life. I love Boaz-- here is this honorable, hard-working man who sees this beautiful woman coming into his fields to glean with the poor, but because of his being a generation older he refuses his heart from considering the possibility of any kind of relationship. That is why the first step must be Ruth's; she must enter his world and overtly let Boaz know she is interested in him, because anything less than that he will assume he is being inappropriate. And he is interested; very. And she has a new life and is cared for. And she bears a child that bears evidence that she and Naomi and you and I have not been forgotten, because that child was ancestor of David and The Son of David... which is an interesting thought: unto us a Child is born because of a younger woman being proactive in her relationships. I thought men always had to make the first move, and women always "have to" be passive participants in their own courtship. I am repeatedly entertained how God's story does NOT fit our regimes of how things are "supposed" to operate, especially in suburbia: it's good the be the King. Dear Abby: never mind.

So as the rain starts up again, and I wind down my thoughts, I consider this: we are not forgotten. In the same way the rain brings hope of things to come and immediate relief from the dry weariness of daily life... in the same way God brings two cut-off widows into restored community... so we, too, are redeemed. Our loving Abba has entered into our drought and purchased our potential with the painful penalty borne on the shredded back beginning from Boaz's baby boy.

So when you see the rain, don't miss it: it is a love song sung on tin roofs reminding us to soak in the Presence of the One who loves us so much.

You are the Beloved,
Jim.