Thursday, November 24, 2016

Perspective.

I'm sitting at my computer this morning, and the sound of the rain is heavy on the metal roofs that cover the cars in the parking lot outside my window. "Lotta rain. A whole lotta rain." For a moment, the sound is pounding down on my perspective as hard as the rain on the roofs.

As the tribes of Israel prepared to cross the Jordan into Palestine, Moses preached the Law to them. In a passage on loving and obeying the Lord your God, he delivered these words: "For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year." (Deuteronomy 11:10-12 ESV)

I try to imagine how the Old Testament might read if the Willamette Valley was the promised land. For those who came west in the 1800s it was the promised land. Would the images of soil, trees, rivers, mountains, and sea have been the dominant ones? Would it have been a land flowing with fish and farmland? Would sunshine have been the asked for blessing? Or would rain have remained high on the list of God's blessings?

Sitting here at the computer, where the rain this morning feels more nuisance than anything else, I need a promised land perspective. My life is like the land that God cares for. His eyes are always upon it. I need to drink the water from heaven.

That's the perspective I need. With so much that I am thankful for on this day, I can add the sound of the rain to my thanksgivings. And relish the soaking it portends.

- Thanksgiving 2016.