RAIN | THE SOUNDING

The sound of rain always makes my heart pound a little harder. Beating with the great calm, with a power so steady, so alive and beyond control.

One of my favorite things to do is stand outside just before a storm. Just to feel it. The wind is strong and you can almost taste it coming, the smell of the rain almost here. The grayness of the sky so close, too close and so thick you have to let it wash over you when it opens up its heart and pours it all out. 

But that wind. 

The first fleet-footed messenger of the rain. I let it wash over me like the drops that will follow, push through my hair and break the dry corners of my eyes and soul and bring the rain. Bring the pounding heart. Bring the sound of things made new. 

What if we came like that? 

What if, when we entered a room, they felt us bring that strength and gentleness and freedom, without our ever saying a word? What if we brought the presence of the One who opens floodgates and rides the clouds like fire and brings the rain like thunder in our hearts?

I want to walk like rain. 

I want to live like that, with a great outer storm and an inner stillness, taking the world with this uncontainable torrent. 

I want to pound with it. With this freedom I’ve been given. To move steady as the sound of rainfall, cleansing as the scent of a storm. A person who washes away and washes feet and walks on water.

Can you imagine? All our hearts beating together like rain? What we could do?

Never alone. That’s what he said about us. He never leaves us, to be sure. But I think I’m also coming to the realization that I am rarely without another believer close by. Father is always surprising me with others in his heart, in places I never thought to look. Showing me that I am surrounded by witnesses to his grace. Other gift-receivers, grace-takers, joy-givers. 

A raindrop feels alone, I guess. Falling at speeds like that, with no knowledge of where it’s going but crystal clear with purpose. Then the collisions begin--these glorious breaking and bondings. So many single beings bound as one. Raindrops in a storm. All together, breathtaking.

What’s so fascinating about rain is how forceful and yet how gentle it is. It’s water, after all. The life-source. Cleansing, reviving, releasing. It can rush and destroy and wash away, and it can bend, and fill, and replenish. 

It gathers and it spreads and it brings life wherever it goes.

And I want to do that.

I want to come with power and gentleness. I want to make the Enemy tremble at the sign of my coming because of the One who is at my side, the weight of his glory on the wind. I want to destroy the things the things that constrain the people he loves when I walk into the room. I want to be the river that rushes to them, the deep well that draws them, the quiet waters He leads them beside, if only for a time. 

Isaiah 55:8-13 (NIV)

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow

    come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

    without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

    It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy

    and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

    will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

    will clap their hands.

Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

    and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the Lord’s renown,

    for an everlasting sign,

    that will endure forever.”

(emphasis added)

I trust the One who sends the rain on a dry and weary land. The one who knows the depths of my heart, the only one who can take my sounding, and fathom me into something more. This is the sound.

This is the sound of you and I. 

This is the great calm.

This is the storm. 

These are the children of Living Water.