Drought

We hear a lot about drought and weird weather and climate change. In general, drought is a period of abnormally low rainfall leading to a shortage of water. There are any number of predictions about what can, and will, and is happening. Some of the most dire predictions are around what happens during a drought, and are actually based on empirical evidence rather than predictive modeling with probability analysis. During drought, plants and animals suffer. Green is a hard color to come by.

Sometimes our lives seem to be in a season of drought where we do not see growth in our lives, things seem to be at a standstill. Yet both Jeremiah 17 and Psalms 1 speak to this, describing someone whose hope is in the Lord God: they are like a tree planted by streams of water whose roots go deep. Their leaves remain green and they continue to bear fruit.

Wow. What we do over time, how we learn to trust in God, where we keep our focus regardless of circumstances, allows us to not only survive times of drought but to thrive, to stay alive and to produce fruit. The fruit we produce may not be what we often think of as fruit in our lives but will be what Paul identifies in his Letter to the Galatians as the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Deep roots. Gotta grow me some.