THE GLORY OF THE RAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 13 April 1939, Page 8

THE GLORY OF THE RAIN

“OUR VERY LIFE DEPENDS UPON IT” The weather is a perpetual subject of conversation. It serves as the vestibule to all that follows. We remark upon the heat or the cold, the sunshine or the rain. Never yet was a book written but had something in it about rain. Our pleasure depends on “the gentle rain from heaven.” Our holidays may be spoiled by it; our sport may be marred or even rendered impossible. International games have to reckon with it. All this is nothing in comparison with the fact that our very life depends upon rain (says the Melbourne “Age” in a Saturday leader.

Man made neither the original soil, nor sunshine, nor rain. Mark the sublimity of the language of the Almighty to Job:

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Who “did cause it to rain on the earth where no man is; on the wilderness wherein there is no man . . . Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?”

Those highly efficient American cousins have gone into the question of man’s share in the production of the world’s harvest, and they work it out at eight per cent. The Almighty does the rest. Even in doing our part we are never without reminders of our limitations. The ground could not be ploughed without rain. When it has been ploughed, sown and harrowed, what more can man do than wait for the early and later rain? He may look up to heaven and pray—what is |>at but a confession of absolute dependence? Man is God’s junior. A striking passage about prehistoric conditions is that in Genesis which states that

“no plant was yet in the earth and no herb had grown in the field, because the Lord God had not caused it to rain, and there was not a man to till the ground.” The partnership was not yet created. “IMPARTIALITY OF RAIN” > One of the wonders of the rain is its impartiality. It has no respect of persons, but falls quite indiscriminately on the just and on the unjust. The saint on one side of the boundary fence is not served one drop of rain more than the sinner on the other side. The Apostle Paul was deeply impressed by the universal goodness of the Creator, and in a noble speech declared that “He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” Suppose for one moment that the gifts of heaven were reserved entirely for the just, what would be the result? On our many mission fields there are always some converts known as “rice Christians,” the name indicating a feeling that they had given up heathenism because the Christian church fed them better. It is no new thing for people to become professedly devout because “they did eat of the loaves and were filled.” Small wonder that the crowd who saw the miracles wanted to make Christ king. He could have kept them in loaves and fishes. When He spurned the throne, they had suggested they went back, walked no more with Him, and some of them helped to nail Him to the cross. God Almighty has no faith in rice Christians or in their modern representatives, the tradesmen who choose the church which seems likely to provide the greatest number of customers. As for rain and sunshine, these are common to the evil and the good. CONSERVATION Another feature of the rain is that it is worthy of careful conservation. Was it not Bishop Moorhouse who when asked to pray for rain replied, “Dam your rivers”? If the rain is simply indispensable and beyond all price, our elementary duty is to % iceive it with such gratitude and practical piety as leads us to store it up against the time of drought. The Bishop, if he could visit us now, would be happy to see our basins, reservoirs, channels and dams, and to know that we are learning the lesson he stressed. The traveller through an irrigation district is deeply impressed with the noble channels which distribute the gift of heaven to the tillers of the soil. Thousands of Victorians have good reason to bless and revere the memory of Alfred Deakin for irrigation. If recent droughts have revealed our limitations in respect of storage, forest conservation, soil protection and other plans for ensuring abundance of water, it was not too high a price to pay. “WATCH AND PRAY”

There are other bishops and clergymen of all denominations who both pray and bid us enlarge our storage accommodation. They believe in the command to “watch and pray.” They watch the statistics of catchments and also direct their prayers to the Almighty. They are nobly logical. We do not look at a ship’s engines and think we explain all by mentioning steam and machinery. Behind both are intelligent beings. Behind nature is God the Creator and Controller. We

cannot understand His methods and reasons, and we are not expected to. Elijah prayed for rain and it came. Lord Lawrence in India said to some who declared prayer for rain was useless for it was an attempt to change the order of things: “We are told to pray and that our prayers will be answered: that is sufficient for me.”