It’s raining. It’s slow and steady. You can barely hear it over the garbage trucks, dishwasher, washing machine, and Netflix.
But it’s finally raining, and it’s reaching deep into the roots and my soul.
I grew up with a mom who loved to garden indoors and out. Her green thumb means a menagerie of indoor plants year-round and all sorts of yumminess outside in the summer and fall. The smell of Lily’s of the Valley take me back to my childhood home. I knew what fresh tomatoes and fiery peppers tasted like, still warm from the summer sun. I learned to harvest seeds from the perilla and marigolds to use for the following spring. My mom taught me to take a grocery store stalk of green onions and stick it into the ground to grow green onions for the rest of the year and to freeze some for the winter months.
Gardening is fun for me until I get into the heat and drought of the summer. I use two rain barrels to keep my water bills at bay, and the barrels have run dry. So have I. I hate paying for water to grow fresh vegetables that taste like vegetables. And for the past two weeks, again, I have dreaded interacting with the outside world because it is so painful, like the scorching hot sun and the nasty mosquitoes and the parched garden with healthy weeds (how is it that the weeds look so green and happy?!).
So today, in the shadow of death #PhilandoCastile #AltonSterling #Dallas #Nice I am grateful for the steady rain that pours life into my garden. The rain isn’t showy like a powerful storm that whips through with noise and lightning. It’s quiet and steady, and because it is so the water won’t wash away the top layer of dried out soil, which can do more damage than good. This rain breaks slowly through the dried out top soil and soaks deep into the roots where the chives, basil, perilla, mint, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers need tending. This rain will mix with the compost I added at planting and throughout the season bringing life from the decomposed remains of meals and snacks from our kitchen.
Lord, thank you for rain that breaks through death into life.