Jesus, Bring The Rain

“Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there’ll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that’s what it takes to praise You
Jesus bring the rain”
-MercyMe, Bring the Rain


One of the things Jim gave Melissa for Christmas was the new MercyMe CD. Specifically, he highlighted this song (above) as his favorite and played it for us, as I had never head of it before. Ironically, the next day the basement flooded (mainly in the room where I live). Melissa called me to tell me while I was out babysitting. She was especially concerned because I had a mound of stuff on the floor of my room/in suitcases that I was getting around to packing. So pretty much my "most important" possessions at this point were on the floor, sitting in standing water. As Cossette, thier one and a half year old, would say, "uh-oh!"


As I was feeding the kids I was babysitting dinner, I started praying about the situation. It went something like this, "Jesus, you brought me this far. If I literally have nothing left but what I'm wearing, I'll be okay..." Did I mention that what I was wearing was damp as well??---I'd gotten rained on pretty well a few times earlier in the day! "You've provided before. You've gotten me 92% of my support. You can handle making sure I have clothes." It occurred to me later that this was a reaction of trust, more so than fear. That's a pretty big deal for me!

A few minutes later Melissa called back and I found out that it was only an inch or so of water (I was thinking it was a lot more than that!). Additionally, somehow the bottom of the suitcases had gotten wet and had sat in standing water, but NOTHING inside the suitcases had gotten went at all!

That night when I reflected on all that had happened, I identified TWENTY ways that God had revealed himself through the flood. For example, I had the bag with my laptop in it in my car, which is usually sitting on the floor right where the water came into my room. Also, just a few days ago I had a bag of Christmas presents sitting on the floor right next to the watery-est part of the room---a bunch of them were books (check out the Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones....that was my favorite gift to give this year!). Several other books were in a pile on the floor, along with my journal. The other books were soaked through, but my journal was not wet at all. This journal was a gift from one of my kindergarten students as well as a record of all that God has been teaching me during support-raising, definitely the one "book" I would want to save of all the books near by it. That's just a small taste of how God used location (the car), timing (after Christmas), and His knowledge of what is most important to me to provide for me during "the flood."


When I got home from babysitting everything was all cleaned up from "the flood," thanks to some serious work on Jim and Melissa's part. As I entered the basement, I immediately saw a rectangular vase with many stones in it. It was the VERY FIRST thing that I saw. Usually it is inside of my room on a bookshelf next to my closet, but it had been moved into the hallway during the cleaning process. Later I told Jim and Melissa that it was an altar, that each stone represented one miracle that God had done in my life. Just like the Israelites made altars or piles of stones commemorating huge things God had done in their lives in the Old Testament days, I made an altar last Spring to remind me of all that God was doing in my life. The first thing Noah did after the flood was construct an altar and praise God and construct an altar. So, Jim suggested that I add another stone for all the miracles we saw God do during the flood. I looked around and added the closest thing to a stone shape as I could find...it happened to be an orange!



"But if that's what it takes to praise You, Jesus bring the rain...." ---MercyMe

Praise God for everything that causes us to praise Him, for any situations that highlight His work in our lives!