I am reading a book by John Piper called Taste and See and this is one of the meditations from it. I thought it was so good.
That Great Work of God: Rain
A Thanksgiving Meditation on Job 5:8-10
“But as for me, I would seek God,
And I would place my cause before God;
Who does great and unsearchable
things,
Wonders without number.
He gives rain on the earth,
And sends water on the fields.”
If you said to someone: “My God
does great and unsearchable things; he doe wonders without number,” and they
responded, “Really? Like what?” would you say “Like rain?” When I read these
verses from Job recently, I felt, at first, the way I did on hearing some bad
poetry that went something like this: “Let me suffer, let me die, just to win
your hand; let me even climb a hill, or walk across the land.” Even? I would
suffer and die to have your hand, and even
walk across the land? As if walking across the land were more sacrificial than
dying? This sounded to me like a joke.
But Job is not joking. “God does
great and unsearchable things, wonders without number. He gives rain on the earth” In Job’s mind rain really is one of the great,
unsearchable wonders that God does. So when I read this a few weeks ago, I
resolved not to treat it as meaningless pop musical lyrics. I decided to have a
conversation with myself (which is what I mean by meditation).
Is rain a
great and unsearchable wonder wrought by God? Picture yourself as a farmer in
the Near East, far from any lake or stream. A few wells keep the family and
animals supplied with water. But if the crops are to grow and the family is to
be fed from month to month, water has to come from another source on the
fields. From where?
Well, the
sky. The sky? Water will come out of the clear blue sky? Well, not exactly.
Water will have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea over
several hundred miles, and be poured out on the fields from the sky. Carried?
How much does it weigh? Well, if one inch of rain falls on one square mile of
farmland during the night, that would be 2,323,200 cubic feet of water, which
is 17, 377, 536 gallons, which is 144,735,360 pounds of water.
That’s heavy.
So how does it get up in the sky and stay up there if it’s so heavy? Well, it
gets up there by evaporation. Really? That’s a nice word. What’s it mean? It
means that the water stops being water for a while so it can go up and not
down. I see. Then how does it get down? Well, condensation happens. What’s
that? The water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust
particles between .00001 and .0001 centimeters wide. That’s small.
What about
the salt? Salt? Yes, the Mediterranean Sea is saltwater. That would kill the
crops. What about the salt? Well, the salt has to be taken out. Oh. So the sky
picks up millions of pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, carries
the water (or whatever it is, when it is not water) for three hundred miles,
and then dumps it (now turned into water again) on the farm?
Well, it doesn’t
dump it. If it dumped millions of
pounds of water on the farm the wheat would be crushed. So the sky dribbles the
millions of pounds of water down in little drops. And they have to be big enough to fall for one mile or so
without evaporating, and small enough
to keep from crushing the wheat stalks.
How do all
these microscopic specks of water that weigh millions of pounds get heavy
enough to fall (if that’s the way to ask the question)? Well, it’s called coalescence.
What’s that? It means the specks of water start bumping into each other and
join up and get bigger, and when they are big enough, they fall. Just like
that? Well, not exactly, because they would just bounce off each other instead
of joining up if there were no electric field present. What? Never mind. Take
my word for it.
I think, instead, I will just take Job’s word
for it. I still don’t see why drops ever get to the ground, because if they
start falling as soon as they are heavier than air, they would be too small not
to evaporate on the way down. But if they wait to come down, what holds them up
till they are big enough not to evaporate? Yes, I am sure there’s a name for
that too. But I am satisfied for now that, by any name, this is a great and
unsearchable thing that God has done. I think I should be thankful---lots more
thankful than I am.
