Drought

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Minneapolis, Kansas, contemplating getting another cup of coffee and shivering from the air conditioning (despite the 100+ degree temperatures of this last week), when I reopened this “Untitled 4” document, sitting stagnant on my desktop. “Drought.” That’s all it says at the top. That’s as far as I’d gotten before the rain finally came and Kansas (at least North Central) didn’t seem in immediate danger of blowing away. Drought—the word, the meaning—doesn’t play on my thoughts like it did when the landscape was dead and dusty.

And yet, I knew then and I know now, a few inches of rain isn’t enough to reverse eight months of record dryness. The wheat was still stunted, tractors still kick up clouds of dirt in the fields, ponds are still just glorified puddles. The rain had been too little, too late, at least for the summer’s harvest. We’ll see about the fall.

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Sometime in March, I began to think about drought. Spring is supposed to be a rainy season. Things are supposed to grow, leaf, turn green, bloom. Instead, the ground cracked. Dust filled the air every windy day (which in Kansas, is most days). In the whole month, Cloud County recorded a mere half inch. I couldn’t understand why it distressed me quite so much, but I found myself repeating “It just needs to rain,” to myself over and over. It seemed like just a little water falling from the sky would fix everything, might even close up the fissure developing in my own soul.

Sometime in April, I began to talk about drought. “How are you doing?” a friend, a colleague, my counsellor would ask. “We really need rain,” I might reply, “And so do I.” It wasn’t just dry anymore. We were looking at a record lack of rain. The wheat crop was measly. Cattle were grazing in brown, crackling pastures. And in the meantime, I was in my own little spiritual drought—drained, dried up. The occasional rumble of thunder in the distance brought a little hope and a lot of fear—one strike of lightning could become a consuming fire, widespread and wild. Still no moisture.

Sometime in May, I woke to an unfamiliar sound—a steady drip, the gurgle of the drainpipe. Rain. At last it came. And when it did, it came with wind and thunder and hail, a green sky full of swirling clouds, an afternoon spent in the school basement with restless students and even more restless teachers. The rain came in the evening, in the morning, during a weekend of garage sales. There wasn’t a deluge, no flooding, but it was quenching. With the lawns now lush, peonies and iris in full, abundant bloom, and air full of cottonwood seeds and birdsong, I felt a springing up inside me. Here was that for which I had been waiting: vivacity, a hopeful, happy, healed heart. All I needed was a bit of rain. Until one bad day, one unexpected car expense, one twinge of loneliness kicked up the dust again.

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Drought and famine, deserts and wilderness crop up frequently in the Old Testament. In an agricultural society in the Middle East, it makes sense how significant dry seasons, failure of crops, places not fit for cultivation would be, how they would be sources of fear and suffering. Drought, famine, those are judgments of God, a consequence of disobedience. Wilderness and desert, those are places of wandering, exile, danger, of reliance on a merciful, holy God. They are places on your way from one home to another truer one—Egypt to Israel, Babylon to Jerusalem.

In the prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, these themes of dry ground, thirst, a need for water frequently appear. This is the punishment of God on Israel, on his children who have turned from him to other gods, who have abandoned his laws and rejected his love,—they will suffer loss of all these good things—a home, prosperity, security—that he himself gave them. The prophets hold nothing back. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” wrote T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land, but could have come directly from the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 2:13, God tells Jeremiah why he will send his people into exile: “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

In Psalm 107, the psalmist writes that the Lord “turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants” (verses 33-34). The hand of God lifted and blessings dried up, evil and suffering find their way in. But then this truth: God “turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water” (verse 35). God promised to prosper and multiply his people, to care for them and He is faithful to all his promises. He takes away his blessing to return his people to him, but he never leaves. That is his pattern. For it is in those deserts and salty wastes that our need is undeniable, our choice is to rely on the God of rain or die. And just as he takes away, so does he restore in remarkable, transformative ways.

In Isaiah 41, God promises that

“when the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.”

And in chapter 43

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people.

And again in 44

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They shall spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams. This one will say, ‘I am the LORD’S’ another will call on the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, ‘The LORD’S’ and name himself by the name of Israel.

God never forsakes, always transforms, and not only the land, but the hearts of his children too. In Chapter 55, the rain and its restorative, life-giving nature is compared to the nature of God’s word—a word that creates, brings new life, that heals and transforms always. Or in chapter 58—one of my favourite passages in the Bible—is this promise: “And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

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The Bible is packed full of these images of deserts becoming rivers and springs. One quick search of the word water brings up a ton of instances. I read them all, every entry for water, dry, drought, wilderness, thirst appearing everywhere from Pentateuch to Prophets, the words of Jesus to John. I researched the heck out of my spiritual drought. I learned a lot. But it didn’t fix me.

The drought was (and is) of my own making—a wilful blindness to the stream of living water flowing straight from the side of Jesus into my very soul. It never dried up. Instead, I built a dam of my pride, idolatry, despair across it and sat in the dry riverbed and cried “why, O Lord, have you forgotten me? Why am I here all alone?” I waited for rain as a river of grace beat against the walls of my heart. But despite my best efforts, grace leaked through. I couldn't keep his kindness at bay forever. In fact, I'm only learning now, my self-inflicted drought was itself good in his good hands.

“I can’t say I’ve enjoyed this season.” I’ve said this line more than once. It’s true. And yet seasons of drought, I’m realising, are those necessary severe mercies. It is only in the absence of water that I have learned to love it. It is only in the seasons when I feel far off from God, that I begin to crave God, and only in a return to Him that I see even a fraction of his grace to me. I would never know the joy of having my thirst quenched, if I didn’t know what it is to be really thirsty. Water—cold, fresh—never tastes as wonderful as when I come in from a long, hot run.

Seasons such as these also hold the blessing of perspective. On a walk recently, I crossed the new river bridge (not the old one, obviously) that crosses the Solomon River about a mile south of town. The Solomon River isn’t a major waterway, never terribly swift or high around Glasco even in the best of seasons (although it has flooded on occasion throughout the years), but in this drought, the water level has reached such a low, that the riverbed is newly visible in many places. Looking over the side of the bridge, I was taken aback by the junk—the tires, the appliances, the plethora of beer cans—half-buried in the mud. Standing there, examining this new territory, I had a picture of my heart in this season. Here in this spiritual drought, I couldn’t avoid taking a look into the dry riverbed of my soul and there I saw, face-to-face, all the trash I’ve been hiding under the waters—the pride, the self-reliance, the anger, the despair, the obsessiveness, the sin. And in revealing it, God was graciously giving me the gift of a chance to start hauling it out, to lift my eyes to heaven and through the Spirit be transformed. Seeing sin is never pretty, but seeing it removed is beyond beautiful.

Rain comes. Drought ends. The seasons that seem to go on and on won’t last forever. And in the perspective of eternity, they are over in the blink of an eye. I wish in the midst of the desert it felt like that. But faith in the goodness of God is more than a feeling. Trust in his providence is tested in times when trusting is no longer easy. And our weak hearts are strengthened by it. I am only now learning to say I am grateful for my own little drought, for a season of feeling alone, weary, and anxious, because I have only just begun to see how it was, is, and will be for my good. I can stand to be thirsty, because I know who will quench my thirst. I can weather the dusty days of doubt, because someday those doubts will be drenched in a downpour of his love and will, themselves, be turned eternally green.