A long time ago, when I was a young adult, I visited my family in Africa. The day after I arrived we loaded in my cousin’s car and drove to Botswana. It was nearing the end of their dry season. Botswana is mostly Kalahari Desert. Dry and brown with some faded green shrubs. The long yellow grasses growing from the dark red soil.
We drove over a high and long bridge. Where I live a bridge like that would be crossing a substantial river, and that was what I expected to see. As we drove over the bridge, I looked down to see river bed. The sandy river bed, cracked and dry. No water in sight.
I asked my Cousin why the bridge was so high if no water was running under it. He informed me that there isn’t any water now, but when the rain comes it can come all at once. In southern Botswana they only get a little over a foot of rain in a year during their wet season. But some years it comes in a shorter period. The bridge is built for those years, to withstand the force of the overflowing rivers.
The image of the dry desert being flooded by life giving water is a powerful recollection. Although the rain can be destructive in its force, it will leave the land refreshed and renewed in its wake.
Seasons of renewal come. Usually after long periods of drought and turmoil, but they do come.
Job 38: 25-27 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?
Roberta Writes 