Randall Grabau Copyright 2012
To my amazement, the little “sprinkle” did not stop. It rained harder and it kept on raining. After about an hour of steady rain, our daughter, with
the help of her computer, retrieved National Weather Service radar images for the past hour. About the time I heard that wimpy rumble of thunder, the radar screen showed just one small spot of rain. As she progressed through a series of images, we watched that tiny spot expand. Then it split into two cells, but all the while it remained directly over us. Even the weatherman on the 10 o’clock news commented on the one small area of rain that did not seem to move. Finally, it stopped raining about 1 1/2 hours after it started and amounted to about 3/4 of an inch. That was more rain than we had gotten for the last two months! The next day, we received an additional 3/4 inch of rain.
I had recently been studying a part of the book of Job for the Men’s Bible Study in which I am involved. Most people know of the trials Job experienced; trials relating to his family, his farming business and his health. Most also recognize that in the end, God blessed Job for his steadfastness through his trials. But the prerequisite to Job experiencing God’s blessing is found in Job 42:10. It says, “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends.” Only after Job prayed for his friends, not just for himself, were his fortunes restored. At times our prayers seem to go unanswered. Perhaps one of the reasons is that we focus too much on ourselves. Maybe what God wants for his children is to be less selfish with their petitions and to focus on the needs of others.
Those two days of rain revived our crops. The rest of the summer has still been very dry. But without that 1 1/2 inches of rain, our crops would have been much worse. God blessed us that evening and that “one small cloud” refreshed our spirits as well as our crops.
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