It’s interesting and useful for us that the scriptures come out of a desert culture and so often describe deserts and droughts and the blazing sun, and the miracle of water—God as the water, God as the spring, God as the rain. We can take heart from this, because the water is inside us, not outside; the spring is the Spirit, is Christ, welling up in us always.
Yesterday when Bumble and I walked to Cronemiller Lake, I ran into a friend. Her dog was chasing a ball, diving into the water and coming out, dripping. I started talking about the weather and the drought and the virus, and my friend said, just matter-of-factly, “God is with us. Everything is OK.”
This didn’t seem foolish to me or too easy. It seemed true. It was true.
When you went forth, O God, at the head or your people,
when you marched across the desert, the earth trembled;
the heavens melted at the presence of God,
at the presence of God, Israel’s God.
You poured down, O God, a generous rain;
when your people were starved you gave them new life.
It was there that your goodness found a home,
prepared in your goodness, O God, for the poor. Psalm 68
Deliver us, O Lord, from our bondage,
as streams in dry lands. Psalm 126
—
A beautiful poem by the Oregon Poet William Stafford
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or the silence after lightening before it says
its names- and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles- you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head-
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.