Rain

It’s been a hot dry couple of months here in British Columbia. Too hot for me, too hot to move, too hot to sleep comfortably in my opinion. It made me long for AC and linger in the cool rooms of stores. The lack of rain has also meant some serious wildfires causing appalling damage to people’s homes and incredible danger to our brave fire fighters. The danger of fire has been so extreme that smoking has been banned in the forests, open fires too. It’s been tense especially last week when it hit very close to home. There was a fire on the top of the mountain on which we live. It was contained after hours of work by the fire fighters but left its legacy of smoke and air hazard warnings that lasted all week.

So this for the last couple of weeks I have been praying for rain. It’s an uncomfortable thing for me to pray for God to douse fire because I pray too for the all consuming fire of His presence and in my head there’s a little dance as I make sure He understands exactly what I am saying. He must smile sometimes when I am praying, just as I have smiled when my children have taken time to explain exactly what they mean to me when I already understand. That thought is overwhelming – that He doesn’t get impatient or bored or push me aside to get on with it, the way we too often do when a job needs doing. But He is gracious, so very gracious.

I prayed for physical rain, to drench the land, to wet the wood and grass and leaves and ground. I prayed also for a spiritual rain to drench this land that I have come to love. I prayed for people to have supernatural divine encounters with the Living God, for His Spirit to flood this land with His presence and His truth. My country, your country, this world needs the touch and love of God so desperately. That truth grips me more and more as I pray, as I draw closer to Him. I know that some people will find that offensive, the thought that I pray for them to know God when they reject the very idea of any deity. But

¹⁶  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.¹⁷ For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’

Romans 1:16-17

So I pray for rain to refresh and restore and I pray for fire to consume and purify. I pray for His saving, sovereign power to come and revive the people of my home, my neighbourhood, my city, my province, my country, this whole world. I pray to be faithful, to be a minister of His gospel to each and every one I meet.

I think that’s a prayer I can invite you to join in with.