This is kind of the “part two” to the last blog I posted.
It does not rain here this time of year. And by “it does not rain here,” I mean “sometimes it rains here, but I wouldn’t call it rain.”
Maybe three times, I’ve been walking outside when a kid yells, “Amiga! Lluvia!” They point up to a fluffy little cotton ball cloud and I stick my hand out, maybe feeling a single, tiny drop.
“Si,” I say, and continue walking.
“Amiga!” they yell again. They motion for me to go inside and escape the deluge, and I laugh and say, “No, gracias. Me gusta lluvia.”
Sometimes I say something along the lines of, “In my house in United States, is much rain all years, so it is good.” They ask which state I live in and I say, “Washington.” They say, “Capital?” and I say, “No, other Washington in North with much rain and computer.” By the time I have figured out how to say all this, the rain has stopped.
Last week, when I was feeling sick-ish, I listened to a sermon from Orcas Island Community Church, the church I attended when I worked at camp on Orcas a couple years ago (see my blogs about that here and here). I like the sermons because they are good teachings, but also because they remind me of that place I love so much.
The sermon I picked was called “Do Not Worry: Stop, Look, Listen, Think.” I lay on the tile floor of the laundry room and listened to it for a half hour. It was about that passage in Matthew 6 where Jesus says not to ever worry about anything, be it clothes or food or money, because God knows what you need. That was the phrase that hung in the air: God knows what you need.
“Do you really, God?” I asked. “Because I feel like I need some air conditioning and a Coke and that’s not happening.” God’s invisible, but I think what he probably did was smirk a little and say under his breath, “Just you wait.”
That night, the heat of the day still hanging around us, Kelsey led our team’s hang-out time on the empty basketball court at the school. She wanted give us a chance to just relax and listen to some music, and as she told us to spread out and get comfortable, I felt a rain drop. Not a little dinky one, but a giant, cold, wet water balloon from heaven.
“It’s raining!” we all exclaimed.
I looked up and said, “But where are the clouds?”
Nicole said, “It’s all clouds!” Sure enough, we couldn’t see any stars. The entire sky was cloudy, and it was about to rain. For real.
We looked up in delight and lay down on the cement steps, still warm from the day. And the rain fell harder and harder as the music started.
The first song Kelsey played had the line, “it’s all gonna be okay.” The rest of it was about Matthew 6, just like the sermon from Orcas Island, about not worrying and about how God knows what we need. And the rain just fell harder and harder, until I started legitimately getting cold. There was so much rain my clothes actually got wet.
An incredible, familiar feeling! It reminded me of home yet rooted me here, in El Salvador, on the steps of an orphanage school at night. It brought out a smell unique to this place: not a bad garbage-y smell, but a spicy, earthy smell that will remind me of Central America even after we’ve left.
The sermon had said, “God knows what you need.” Does he ever. As I stared at the sky with my mouth open (you don’t need to filter rainwater!) I could feel Jesus saying, “You have no idea how long I’ve been planning this. I’ve been excited to send this rain.” That made me laugh out loud. I laughed again when, a half hour later, the rain stopped just as the last song finished and we were sitting up to wring out our sopping hair.
(This has been a pattern in my life: I’m troubled and I tell God how I feel with lots of words and suggestions and dramatic silence over minutes or months. When God comforts me he can do it in a second and it’s never the way I expect.
This happened once in college, during a particularly long and frustrating spell of doubting. I’ve always been prone to doubting. Usually it’s whether or not God exists, or whether Jesus is really the only way to God, heaven, whatever. The annoying thing is that God doesn’t ever answer my questions in my terms. This particular time, after refusing me signs and wonders and compelling evidence in any of my religion classes I watched a movie on Netflix and at the end of the movie the characters stood by a fence and watched a sunset and for some reason it was so striking I knew it had to be God.
It almost made me mad: “Oh, no, you didn’t. I’ve been questioning you for months and giving you all these good reasons why you shouldn’t exist, and you’re going to just answer me with a pink sunset? I’m a religion major and I’d like to see some literature. A sunset in a movie? I don’t think so, mister.” But he did. I saw a pretty sunset and felt the peace you hear about in Philippians 4:7, the kind that surpasses all understanding, and despite all that was going on, I felt myself move a little closer to God again.)
Say what you want about that rain: maybe you’d it was just a weird weather change and God didn’t plan it for just us. But for the six of us living in a wicked dry season, it was a perfect, refreshing miracle. That rain was different than any we felt before or since. It came just when we needed it. God knew it was coming and he was delighted to give it. And it was even better than air conditioning and a Coke.
