Joining up with Five Minute Friday this week on the prompt:  rain

Those 4 letters were once just a common word in my vocabulary that described the weather.  The word was neither good nor bad.  It just was.  It rained.  Or it didn’t rain.  I never gave it much thought.

And then my husband became a farmer.

Now that word implies so much more than a fact about the forecast.  The word “rain” is spoken with emotion in my home these days.  Some days the word lives up to a four-letter reputation and becomes a curse.  The land has become dry and the crops are parched; the crackling of their own leaves betray a sickness that even the next rain may not heal.

In another month, or perhaps another season, “rain” is breathed out as a sigh of relief.  On those days, the word becomes a prayer of thanksgiving.  Rain and blessing become synonyms.  The crop will survive and possibly even thrive.

The earth, the crops, and the rain (or lack thereof) remind me of our own lives.  There are days when we are weary and parched, and it seems like we do not have enough energy to keep going.   We need “rain”.  We need the clouds to open up and shower us with blessings.  We want respite.  We long for rest.

Waiting in the dry season is one of the hardest things we do.  We are not a patient people.

However, often when we get past the parchment, and look back, we can see that the “rain” was there all along.  We may not have felt the instant relief that comes with a mid-summer shower, but now that time has passed, we can see growth, and strength, and health.

The blessing was just disguised.

Back in the 1800s a song was penned, There Shall Be Showers of Blessings.   Yes!  Yes, there will be!

A few years ago, Michael W. Smith wrote a contemporary version, The Sky Spills Over.  Yes!  Yes, it does!

There will be showers of blessings!  There are showers of blessing — the sky is spilling over.

Laura Story says is so well in her song, Blessings …

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not our home

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise