And Rain in Due Season

 

The sparrows and small birds that come around our place find a drink and sometimes some seed to eat on a regular basis.  While God takes care of His creatures, it looks like He gives us the opportunity to ‘help’ once in a while.  My egotism probably amuses Him when He receives reminders from me that the small creatures are suffering from the weather.  But everyone—including the Master—needs a laugh now and then.

 

An inch and a half of rain and several little sprinkles since have kept us hoping for a ‘toad strangler’ that will fill the tanks and bring up the lake levels.  The land is still thirsty despite the good rain.  The earth needs a good soaking that will seep down to the roots of the trees.  Shallow rooted trees may do well—such as the paradise trees that the government asked farmers to plant back during the dust bowl days—but big trees like the pecans, elms, oaks, and hackberries need two or three deep soakers to keep them going all summer.  This year the trees have been hesitant to leaf out without the water to keep them alive.  They have their own survival mechanism built in.  Sometimes I wish people were more like trees.

 

If we were like trees, we would know better than to gamble on possibilities.  We would deal with what we got and not what we might get.  We would provide others with what we could instead of what they think they need.  We would stand rooted to good ground and good ideas without being shaken from our foundations by the winds of fashion, impurity, and the modern diseases of ‘baring it all’ to gain popularity.  If we stood with other trees as a forest of sensible beings, we could withstand almost any storm.

 

As it is, we are not trees.  We are—one by one—subject to the vagaries of time, chance, and circumstance.  One man fights a fire and burns while another stands back and clamors for help to rebuild—not considering what one man has sacrificed to help his neighbor.  No, we can stand with others of like mind, but we live or die as individuals.  We can share our knowledge and understanding, or we can stand aloof and judge others.  But the Master still provides rain in due season on the just as well as the unjust—on the single tree as well as to the forest.  It’s a wonder that the trees don’t look at us aghast at the possibilities that we waste.