Rain, we tend to think, is about life. It’s about growth. It’s about prosperity. It’s about plenty. And most of us live in a state of rain, for we indeed have plenty. And perhaps that is part of the problem. At the first sign of adversity, we might tend to throw our hands up in frustration, gaze at the sky longingly, and wonder whether our faith has been misplaced. When we stop feeling wet, there is a panic moment. 

I’m a lawn guy. There are very few things that give me more satisfaction than a well tended, taken care of, neatly trimmed, lush, green lawn. And here in middle Tennessee we are fortunate because we have the kind of climate that allows for lawns like this. For many, a lawn like that doesn’t even require putting a sprinkler on it. That’s not to say lawns around here don’t get weeds; they do. And it’s not to say that lawns don’t get brown; they do. What’s curious, though, is that a lawn can brown even when it’s been raining.

It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? It certainly is for me because I tend to think that the most important ingredient to a green lawn is water. A brown lawn seems to indicate dryness. But sometimes a brown lawn doesn’t mean there’s been too little rain; it means there’s been too much.

See, for a lawn to be healthy, it needs to have roots that go deep. And when it rains all the time, there’s no reason for the roots to go deeper to find water. All that water is right there, right below the surface, and the first time you hit a week without any rain, that green grass that has sprung up to beautifully… dies.

Curious, right?

Curious, and instructive. Because there’s probably a principle here from nature for us to learn from.

Rain, we tend to think, is about life. It’s about growth. It’s about prosperity. It’s about plenty. And most of us live in a state of rain, for we indeed have plenty. And perhaps that is part of the problem. At the first sign of adversity, we might tend to throw our hands up in frustration, gaze at the sky longingly, and wonder whether our faith has been misplaced. When we stop feeling wet, there is a panic moment. In terms of the illustration above, we tend to turn brown. And as we do, we look to the circumstances around us as the problem.

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