Welcome friends. Some years ago I was helping my father do some research on my great-grandfather. We came across a newspaper cutting that related how the Queensland government of the day had gazetted a day of prayer because of an on-going drought. This was during the 1870’s. This got me to thinking about the present drought and the lack of any such response by government, national and state. I guess it is another indicator as to where we are in the national spiritual stakes.
We are not to confuse mechanics with purpose and reason. It’s all very well to come up with our charts replete with isobars and lows and highs but we are always playing catch-up. We cannot produce the lows that spawn the rain. This is indeed a land of droughts and flooding rains, but it can also be a land of good seasons. God can decide what we have at any time. Do you suppose that He who made the universe struggles to make it rain? Why He even has his way in the whirlwind.
From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
Acts 17:26
Acts 17:26 says God knows the boundaries of every nation and their longevity. He knows the peculiarities of the land they occupy. As Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, there is a God in heaven who rules in the kingdoms of men. He has all sorts of things at His disposal, either to bless or punish a nation.
The descendants of Abraham developed into a fledging nation in the flat flood plain of the Nile delta in Egypt. Deut. 10:11ff tells of how they watered “with the foot”, a reference to the foot paddles used to move the water in the irrigation ditches. It was a land of abundant and reliable surface water, but they were going to move to another land – a land of hills and valleys which would be watered by rain. God warns them that if they disobeyed, then He would withhold the rain with resultant hardship.
I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away.
Amos 4:7
I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another.
One field had rain; another had none and dried up.
And so it transpired. Their continuing disobedience meant that their national history was a chequered one, resulting in Assyrian and Babylonian exile. Along the way, God disciplined them (for whom the Lord loves He disciplines) with various punishments including drought. 2 Sam.21:1 relates a three year drought in the time of David. David was in a position to be able to consult the Lord and finds it was a response to sins of his predecessor, King Saul. Amos 4:7 tells of a time when God caused it to rain on one town but not on another. Hag.1:11 tells how God called for a drought in the rebuilding after the exile because of the disobedience of the people.
We are not strangers to these kind of weather patterns. Why the present drought? God keeps His own counsel with regard to the purposes of withholding the rain, but we can rest assured there is purpose. God has to try and get our attention somehow. When we spurn His goodness in the unspeakable gift of Christ and His word by willing ignorance, how can we rightfully claim His blessings.
Recent events in Queensland and New South Wales with regard to abortion law must give God pause to consider some sort of response. When a people enshrine in law the final solution to the most vulnerable members of their society is to kill them, how can we claim to be rightful heirs of the goodness of God? One of the things God hates is “hands that shed innocent blood”, and what could be more innocent than our babies? They are not tumours or cancers to be eradicated. There was a time when it used to be said, “if wombs had windows abortions would cease” but now with our scans and ultrasounds etc. we have those windows but the killing goes on. And what are we doing to our sensitivities when, as it is reported, babies that survive the abortion process are simply left to die? Whether killed in the womb or out of it makes no difference, but once born they are not longer “out of sight” , but are citizens of the land and yet they deprived of the right to live. The ancient Canaanite peoples lost their land because of their sin, which included sacrificing their children to the god Molech. And can we be any better when we sacrifice our children on the altar of selfishness and inconvenience?
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
Micah 7:18
It will rain again. God holds not His anger for ever (Mic. 7:18), but allows us to go our own way. Will we learn?
