On the 97th day...

Indulge me while I pontificate a bit...

One hour ago, just after arriving at school this morning (yes, I'm writing this during a prep period before teaching), it rained. After 96 days without it, water from the heavens finally arrived. The dry season is officially over, the season of liquid blessing has arrived. Perhaps due to my twelve years in the pulpit, or perhaps simply because of the power of these 96 days, I can't help but see this rain in biblical proportion:

May I coin a new term? (Or probably someone invented it long ago; I just know that it popped into my mind today.) At any rate, this morning's weather event seems like a "literal metaphor" (admittedly, I just used a simile to describe it...) You see, rain is indeed a true, physical (i.e., literal) life-giving, God-sourced blessing. And yet, at the same time, it is a profound analogy (i.e., metaphor) of something higher and deeper. Thus it evidences both God's tender care for creation, while at the same time images living water, the fount of life, the rains of the Spirit, that which alone can satiate our deepest thirst for eternal life.

If you will permit me to be even more esoteric, I'm pondering today's rain as almost sacramental. That is to say, I have some sense of the intangible, mysterious presence of the Lord intertwined within or through the metaphor itself. Also like a sacrament--like new wine at the Lord's table--we need it as a repeated reminder of the provision and presence of Christ. Please don't think I'm a flaming heretic here; of course rain is not literally a sacrament. (But maybe it is a "metaphorical sacrament"...?)

Definitely getting a bit over-theological here for something that is really quite simple: After dust and dry and tough-breathing and plants barely hanging on...we at last have cooling rain. For that, let me just say "Praise the Lord!"