One night recently, about 9:00, I was driving home from Bruning to Byron, and was treated to a fabulous lightning show the entire way. Of course, all the while I was watching the clouds and flashes of light, I was praying that it would bring us some rain.
In spite of the old wisdom that ninety days after a fog we should receive rain, that didn't prove true for us at the end of March–and all the clouds and lightning I saw that night didn’t produce a single drop of rain either. The drought continues, and so we will keep waiting for the rain that is so needed to fill the ponds, help the grass grow in the pastures, and begin to replenish our subsoil moisture.
Whenever we need to start a conversation or make small talk, we can always fall back on the weather, and I think that's especially true in farming communities such as ours. Our fortunes really do rise and fall with the weather to a large extent.
Maybe that's why there are so many weather-related proverbs. I remember reading once that if we don't get enough electrical thunderstorms in the summer, we will make up for it by having blizzards in the winter. Could that be what happened with our recent big blizzard, which took out so many power lines and caused so much damage?
There are lots more sayings about the weather, such as, “If a dog lies on its back with its belly pointed to the sky, it’s going to rain,” or “cows bunched up by the fence means a storm is coming,” or “sun dogs mean a change in the weather.” And of course, “If it rains on Easter Sunday it will rain for seven Sundays after.” I haven’t researched the scientific accuracy of any of these, but some people certainly do swear by them. And right now, I think we’re all clinging to anything that will give us hope of some good, soaking rains!
But the only hope we can cling to with absolute certainty is the hope to be found in our Heavenly Father, who always keeps his promises. The prophet Zechariah wrote some true words about rain in the Bible. In Zechariah 10:1, he said, “Ask the LORD for rain in the springtime; it is the LORD who sends the thunderstorms. He gives showers of rain to all people, and plants of the field to everyone.”
So let’s keep on praying for rain, trusting that when the time is right, it will come.
