Calrossy Chaplaincy

REFLECTIONS ON RAIN!

Remember that children’s song, ‘Rain, rain, go away, come again another day’?  Over the last few weeks I’m sure that would have been the plea of many, many people in Queensland and NSW, with a so-called “rain bomb” bringing massive and devastating floods to so many regions.  For those at Lismore and the far North Coast, the rainfall set records that they definitely would have rather avoided….

Though we’re dependent on rain, especially for life on the land, it’s certainly not everyone’s favourite experience all the time, is it?  (Take last November, for instance, for many of us!) 

If you enjoy your music, you might have noticed the different attitudes to ‘rain’ in many songs about the topic over the last few decades.  For instance, the band Dragon warned, ‘Don’t go out in the pouring rain’; while Eddie Rabbitt disagreed, singing, ‘I love a rainy night’.  Rainfalls proved to be bitter-sweet reminders for artists like Eruption (‘I can’t stand the rain on my window, bringing back sweet memories’) and The Eurythmics (‘Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory…raining in my head like a tragedy’). More recently, the Scottish band Travis complained, ‘Why does it always rain on me?’; but Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande sang that they wanted it to ‘rain on me’.  And decades ago, Gene Kelly enjoyed just dancing and ‘singing in the rain’! 

One thing about rain is that it falls – down.  We don’t see rain heading up, from the ground, into the clouds!  That’s blindingly obvious, of course; but there’s a short passage in the Bible that draws an important comparison between that fact, and how God works in this world He has made.  In Isaiah 55:10-11 God says: ‘As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It…will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’  These words are a reminder that just as rain will inevitablyfall down to the ground, the things God says and promises, will happen.  What does that mean for us? We can trust God and His Word – whether the weather is rain, hail or shine…