Job 38:33-35 “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are'?

Psalm 51:2 “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!”

I remember one January semester while I was attending boarding school in Zambia. The heavens opened up and rain fell and fell and fell. That semester, it was my chore to measure the amount of rainfall at the school. I had to go out to this little collector that was set out. Inside was a glass jar that would contain the water that fell over the collector during the night or the rain storm. Every morning I would go out there and pour the collected rainwater into a graduated cylinder and measure how much rainfall there was. That semester I would be out there measuring and emptying the collector two, three, sometimes four times in a day. Sometimes the rain was so heavy I was having to continually run and check to make sure we got an accurate record. However I never went out at night, which threw off the accuracy. At the end of the semester, I had measured well over 100 inches of rainfall.

That semester, the rains were even worse up stream of our little school and the floods came. The water came rushing down one night pouring down the river, washing, sweeping, wiping out everything that it could. The school, built on a hill had water lapping at the base of the buildings. The grass strip we used as a runway would only serve floatplanes for weeks. The bridge to the school was washed away, those huge African hardwood tree trunks ripped to shreds, broken, beaten, destroyed. We had a swinging bridge over the river to one of our favorite swimming spots. We had made the bridge out of steel cables - 1 ½ thick steel cables – and those had been snapped by the rushing water as if it they were threads. The cartography of the area was changed. The rushing flood besieged us in the school. It was over a week before one brave villager managed to get across the rushing torrents to help out at the school. We had to wait for the water flow to calm, although the rushing waters began to subside at a rate that none thought was fast enough. When the water was calm enough, the school boated supplies in.

The flood damaged and destroyed everything in its path that was not firmly entrenched. Some of the only surviving objects of the flood were ancient trees whose roots where so strong and deep and whose trunks were wide and strong enough to provide strength to resist the flow, yet enough suppleness that the water would not break it. Some of the other survivors were smaller trees that were sheltered behind the large, ancient trees.

I well remember the adventure of returning home at the end of the semester. We students had to be flown out from another higher altitude airstrip at a nearby mission hospital. Normally the trip might take an hour, however that trip took over half a day!

We pray that God's blessings will come down like rain, and rain is often a symbol of God's blessing, but we rarely ever expect the true results of God's blessings pouring down on us. We pray for this, yet when we get the torrential downpours and all the destruction that goes with it, we think that there is something wrong! We want the safety of our houses and the beauty of our landscaped efforts. We want the raining blessings to be similar to a soft gentle rain. We want a heavenly sprinkler system to water the laws of our lives. God wants to cleanse us from everything that would hold us back. His blessings do so. It destroys what we hold on to and rely on instead of God. It ravages our gardens and our beautiful Kincaidesque dreams turning them into a churning wilderness where the only method of survival is to be sheltered behind the Ancient of Days, letting His strength and resiliency shelter us from His mighty flood.

When we pray for God's blessings and when we ask for God to take control. When we ask Him to lead us, He takes everything from us and allows only what He desires to remain. The floodgates of heaven do so much damage to what we think things should be, but only after do we see how the changes made things better.

After that flood, the banks of the river were changed. Our muddy swimming hole was changed, and the gardens by the banks of the river were en richened by the mineral and nutrient filled river silt that had settled. The remaining trees were stronger because of the flood, while we students had the opportunity to explore a new version of our old playgrounds. The change was good, but how long did it take for us to see it that way?

May God cleanse us from all our unrighteousness and sin. May He wash away the world from us and remove the dirt of materialism, the stain of sex, the grit of avarice, and the tarnish of profanity. When He does so we will seem to loose so much, but the gain will be greater! This is what it means to live for Christ and to die to self. We can (and will) lose everything that is dear to us to focus us and entrench us with Christ. He will ensure that only He is left behind in our lives.

Search me, O God, and know my heart today;
Try me, O Savior, know my thoughts, I pray:
See if there be some wicked way in me:
Cleanse me from ev'ry sin, and set me free.

I Praise Thee Lord. for cleansing me from sin:
Fulfill Thy Word, and make me pure within;
Fill me with fire, where once I burned with shame:
Grant my desire to magnify Thy name.

Lord, take my life, and make it wholly Thine:
Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine;
Take all my will, my passion, self and pride;
I now surrender: Lord in me abide.

O Holy Ghost, revival comes from Thee:
Send a revival start the work in me:
Thy Word declares Thou wilt supply our need:
For blessing now, O Lord, I humbly plead.