This is a year to learn

We are now in a serious drought, accompanied by a heat wave.  My garden has turned to dust.  To add to my woes, all five tomato plants are now blighty, even though it seems I did everything right.  I will get a few tomatoes before the plants die completely, but not many.  The okra plants, normally as high as my head at this time of year, are only about up to my  waist.  In order to see the harvest I have to bend over and look under the leaves.  Potatoes and onions are pitifully small.  Green beans have few seeds inside, and the green outside shell is thin and tasteless.  Even the soaker hose does little good.  The flowers are still doing well, as if to console me.  And isn't it strange that when there's no rain, the good plants suffer while the weeds continue to prosper?

So this is a year of learning through my mistakes and not letting the weather affect my spirits.  There is always next year.

I am reminded of Elijah, in the Bible, who went through a drought for three years along with the rest of Israel.  Finally one day he told the wicked King Ahab, "Go eat and drink, for a rainstorm is coming."  Then Elijah  went to the top of Mount Carmel, bowed to the ground, and prayed for rain.  Six times he sent his servant to look across the sea for a coming storm.  The servant saw only a clear sky, and Elijah kept praying.  The seventh time his servant came back and said, "I saw a little cloud the size of a man's hand rising from the sea."

By the way, I do not pray for rain.  The only time I pray about the weather is if it's so windy I think I may be about to blow away, and then I just pray we live through  it.  God doesn't need anybody to tell him what to do with the weather.  But I do love the story of Elijah.  And I confess, sometimes I look at the sky for a tiny cloud the size of a man's hand, wishing it would grow larger and bring rain.

There are things to be thankful for in the middle of a heat wave.  First of all, I'm glad we have air conditioning after being without it in our lives until 2008.  I'm also thankful for  the early morning hours before the sun rises high in the sky, when I can go outside and enjoy nature.  

I'm thankful for air-conditioned cars; I remember only too well when I was a little kid, riding with the windows down, wind blowing hot in my face and messing up mine and my mother's hair.  Dust rolled in on the wind till you could taste it;  since there were no freeways... only two-lane roads... if we got behind a cattle truck, we often had to stay behind them and put up with that awful smell until it was safe for my mom to get us past them (my dad hated to drive, so my mother always drove).  

I'm thankful both churches I attend have air conditioning.  Back at the little Eagleville Church of Christ, and Grandma's Zion Church out in the country, the only relief from heat was to open the windows and pass around the hand-held fans all funeral homes gave to churches, to advertise their services.   

I'm thankful we don't depend on what we grow in the garden; even with inflation, we still have enough money to buy groceries, plenty to keep us fat and sassy.  I'm thankful we aren't farming for a living, because the crops are going to suffer from this lack of rain.

So there you have it.  My thoughts about the weather.  You know what they say:  Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

Peace.