From Above...

Catching up this morning on the status updates of my Facebook friends, I find no shortage of complaints against all the rain we're having lately in the south. I don't know the official count of how many days worth of rain we've had presently but I stopped counting at one-hundred-eighty-two days straight. I've reminded God several times that this is 4.5 times longer than in the days of Noah.

Of course this can be aggravating to our routine and our wanting to go out and enjoy the last fleeting days of southern summer, but this morning I was reminded of the drought of last year. We were on serious water restrictions and two states were locked in legal battles over how much water the other state should receive from a shared reservoir.

We were praying for rain. People did rain dances. Politicians in the worst stricken areas even called times of prayer that God would deliver rain to a normally saturated area such as ours. Now we have rain by the buckets and our response is to complain. Most of the complaining is tongue-in-cheek and harmless, but some are severely perturbed that we have so much rain as of late. My how our memories are as fleeting as the summer.

Rain was once the sign of blessing and favor but now has become a sign of inconvenience to us. Rain used to make people worship, even inventing gods - such as Baal of the Canaanites who was thought responsible for the winter rains - to praise for rainfall. We know that the One True God - Jehovah - is responsible for all of Earth's functions including rain, however the barometer of much of the church is reading a high pressure in the area of complaining.

We've lost our way a bit. We've become so secular-ly dependent on Wal Mart, Target, Publix, Bruno's, Food World, et al - that we no longer see rain as a blessing. In fact we look at the scripture, Matthew 5:45, that say God sends rain on the "just and unjust," as meaning bad things happen to good people as well as bad people - who really deserve it. We see it with sort of a "raining on our parade" mentality. This is because we've become so blessed that the natural phenomenon known as rain - which was anciently a mark of favor, blessing and prosperity by the "gods" - has become a negative connotation to us who know the true God responsible for it.

Are we so prosperous that blessings have become curses because they don't fit our agendas and wants? We are a spoiled kid crying over the two lollipops held in each hand because they aren't big enough. We must remember from where every blessing comes - our magnificent God! He pours them upon us because of His great love. It has come to the place, however that we are spoiled and in order for God to remain true to His nature as being a good Father, that He will have to do His Fatherly duty and restrain gifts from us to teach us gratitude and to remember Him as the One knowing best.

Rain, in the first place, is where we got the notion that God is up, as in "up there," or "up in the sky." Our ancient brothers who depended on God's good Earth in farming would see the rain falling down from the sky, watering their farms, producing food to keep them from famine and praised God from "where" blessings flowed. They determined that God was up in the sky because the rain falling down was so good and so vital that every good and perfect gift comes from God who must be above where the rain is.

We would do so good as to leave our modernity and progressive theological knowing to turn again our eyes upward in thanksgiving to God from whom all blessings pour... I mean flow.