Reprieve
This morning, in the pre-dawn hours a storm raged through my town with flashes of lightening and loud, rolling thunder. The aftermath has been a gray day of drizzle. Depressing, you say? Not for me. I laid in my bed this morning listening to the drum rolls of thunder and the windblown rain against my window, and it brought me joy. I imagined myself physically lying in a desert (see my last post for more explanation) soaking in the life giving water. I listened in my mind to the water gushing through the dry arroyos quenching the arid land. The rain rejuvenated my soul and I knew it was a gift from God.
A few years ago while in Morocco our small caravan of two packed vehicles climbed through the Atlas mountains during the dry season. The blue-tinted rocky escarpments rose to tremendous peaks with distant white caps visible in the height of summer. The valleys in the lower hills rippled with brown barren grass. Then the road climbed over a ridge placing us on a high plateau of green, red, blue, and purple. In the middle of the barrenness we found this oasis that brought us to a halt. Everyone piled out of the vehicles to take it all in.
I’m convinced that God provides moments of reprieve from our deserts. The flowered plateau and the refreshing rain are reminders of God’s care. As pleasant as these physical realities are, they are but metaphors for a deeper reprieve God provides from the deserts of our soul. Today, I’m soaking in the showers of God’s love and absorbing the beauty of his presence among the barren hills around me.
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