He Comes Like Rain and Rain Comes Back

The window seat looks out over the lane and in November the rain comes down the glass in that particular way where you can watch one drop take about eleven seconds to reach the sill.

Early. Lamp still on because it is not properly light and will not be for a while. Blanket over both of them. Her friend has the good end.

Tea, two cups, one of them already going cold because that is what happens when you sit and talk instead of drinking it.

And she woke to the rain this morning and there was something in her at the sound of it. She has not said this out loud. It was not a big thing. It was a softness, an openness, the sort of thing that used to happen more and has not happened in a long while.

And in the same breath, almost the same second, came the other thought: do not get attached to that.

Because in her experience these things come once. You get a morning. And then it is not there again and you spend a year quietly looking for it and building the whole of your inner life around one Tuesday.

Come and take the less good end of the blanket with me. Because there is a verse in Hosea that picks one image for how God comes, and the image is the whole point.

He picked rain on purpose

Hosea is a short book and this comes early in it.

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.Hosea 6:3

Two images in one verse and both are about return.

His going forth is prepared as the morning. Morning is the most reliably returning thing there is. It has never once failed to come.

He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain. And rain, in that land, came in two seasons: the former rain in autumn to soften the ground for planting, and the latter rain in spring to swell the grain before harvest. Twice a year, in season, for the whole of somebody's life.

He could have picked lightning. He could have picked a flood or a fire or a comet. He picked the two things in the natural world that are most known for coming back.

You are dealt with by Somebody who chose returning things as His own picture, and neither the morning nor the rain has ever been a one off. That is not a nice reading of a farming metaphor; Hosea 6:3 picks the morning and picks two seasons of rain, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an agricultural image and lays it in a window seat in November with rain going down the glass. He described His own coming as a thing that returns.

Now the flinch, and I want to look at it kindly because it did not come from nowhere.

Do not get attached to that. You said it to yourself in about a second, without deciding to, which means it is well practiced.

It came from somewhere. Somewhere in your history there was a good thing that did not come back, and you learned, sensibly, to hold the next one loosely so it could not do that to you again.

That was a wise adjustment at the time. It is now costing you the ability to receive anything, because a thing held that loosely does not get held at all.

You are permitted to receive something without bracing, and the flinch you learned was about a different thing that did not come back. Psalm 34:8 says taste and see that the Lord is good, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes tasting a safe act rather than a risk, because the goodness in that verse is a property of Him and not a run of luck.

What rain does not require

One more thing, and it will change how you sit in that window.

Rain does not require anybody to have done anything. Nobody waters a whole country. The ground does not earn it and the ground cannot arrange it and the ground has no idea when it is coming.

What the ground does is be there when it arrives.

That is the whole participation described in that verse: if we follow on to know the Lord. Following on is not producing rain. It is staying pointed in a direction while weather does what weather does.

You are being asked to stay facing Him rather than to produce anything, and rain has never once required the ground to arrange it. Hosea 6:3 says if we follow on to know, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes following on a small continuing thing rather than an achievement anybody has to sustain.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it works in a window seat before it is light.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not how long a softness lasted last time. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.