Re(Tro)View: The Rain of God (no, I meant to use that "rain")

     I love all things modern and tech-ie: I spend way too much of my free time on-line, (yeah, like I have free time LOL),  I have always been a gadget fanatic, and I love to vacation in big cities.

....Have I shown you my pics from my vacation to Seattle last summer? Here, sit down for six hours and I will show you... 

So, you might assume that I am more of an urban/city guy, but you would be wrong.  I live in a small town surrounded by farms on purpose, and if I could fit four kids in a truck (that I could afford) you better bet I would have one. So, yeah, I really am a good bit more country at heart.    

  In our contemporary world of gadgets and technology it is easy to forget the connection that we all have to rural life. For example: Our food comes from those places.  Sometimes I think city people believe food is factory made, where it is packaged in plastic in a sterile environment.  There are still people who get their hands dirty every day growing what we eat and the people who grow it still connect to this world on an elemental level.  The soil, the weather, the seasons, the bugs and blights...all these things make up their day to day. It's worth reminding the urban world of the connection we all have to all of those things too.  Connectedness to the soil brings a certain kind of peace too, after all there is a reason they called it being "grounded".    

   One of the great blessings of living in north central Ohio (and there are many...Just ask Lebron James, it's a great place to live) is that we are surrounded by a great multitude of Amish/Old Order Mennonite farms and most of those farms also have great little farm stands. During the summer this is where a majority of the produce my family eats comes from.  The vegetables are fresh, organic, local, and usually a good deal cheaper than our grocery stores. There is a certain joy to seeing the very vegetable patch that your onions come from while buying onions.  In many ways rural life is a blissful existence. 

    But, before you sell your penthouse in Manhattan and move to Green Acres to start an idyllic farm let me insert a little dose of reality here as well.  Farming is hard...like, really hard.  The work is backbreaking, the hours are endless, the vacations are few, and the risks are legion.  A farmer looks at every blue sky and thinks how pretty the day is and then calculates how much rain has fallen on the corn this year... and how much does it yet need.  A farmer looks at every pretty apple blossom and wonders if the bee hives he/she rented to pollinate the fruit will get the job done or will it collapse mysteriously and die.  A farmer looks at the rising and falling futures market and tries to time the sale of their crops to match the rise of prices always knowing that it is a roll of the dice. 

In areas where corn and soy beans are prevalent farmers have to time the harvest just right or the produce will not be dry enough to go to market and they will have to pay a kiln/dryer to dry the corn/beans further.  But if you wait too long the market may already be saturated, driving prices down...so when do you take the plunge and harvest?  How much will the kiln/dryer take from your bottom line if you have to pay for it? How well did everyone else do?  It is a world of risks. 

    When the prophet Joel announces the blessing of God he does so with an eye to his farming audience.  God promises things like "early rain", full threshing room floors, overflowing oil and wine storage vats, and promises of pest free growing seasons.  All of this sounds like great news to the primarily farming people of the Old Testament.  

Joel 2:23-32
O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame. Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

At some point though Joel wanders away from the literal farming good news to a more spiritual place.  He goes from  talking about literal rain that waters the land so farmers can grow food to a rain of God's "spirit on all flesh".  When that happens sons and daughters prophesy, the elderly have prophetic dreams, and even the lowliest of the low will receive an equal share of God's presence.     

When a farmer plants a seed one thing they have to remember is that no matter how much you do to nurture that seed, you can't make it grow and you cannot control how it grows.  You can try to provide best possible conditions and hope for the best.  When God sends his Holy Spirit to rain down on us it waters our soul in ways that we have no control over.  
    The funny thing about the passage from Joel is how God's Holy Spirit totally fails to follow human convention.  God blesses the powerful and the weak, the poor and the rich but He does it on his own terms.  He plants the seed of the word in their heart then he waters it with his Holy Spirit.  What grows is, by human standards, wild.  Visions and dreams for young and old.  Prophesy and dreams for men and women.  Even the lowly slaves are given equal shares of God's grace filled Spirit.   His farm looks nothing like ours and his crop fails to follow all our assumptions.  When God farms he grows a crop of radical new life.  
    In your life and mine God is at work.  But be aware that what God grows in your heart may be equally unpredictable.  God has a plan and that plan is perfect, but it is not perfectly understandable. Right now God is planting His word, which is to say His very thoughts and ideas, in your heart.  God waters it with his Spirit but what grows in that place is beyond your control.  Be ready for it to grow and don't assume it is a tame crop like beans and corn.  It is a wild flower that blooms in ways you cannot imagine.  Trust God and wait and watch...just like the farmers do.