Right As Rain
For years I had to commute an hour to Detroit for work. In the morning I traveled south on US 23, and to use my time wisely, I would listen to the audio Bible in my car as I fought traffic. On a day just like any other day, I passed by the same golf course that I had seen a thousand times. However, this time I was captivated by the group of dead trees standing in a pond at the course entrance. I figured, that due to heavy rains and improper drainage and landscaping, what was supposed to be a beautiful row of live trees in a valley was now a stagnant swamp with water-logged dead trees. It struck me that the same water that trees need to survive was the very thing that was killing them due to time and volume. Too much rain was received all at once for too long, and now the trees die in the water that they need to survive. I think the human spirit is similar in a way.
I think the human spirit needs truth to live and thrive. Yet, there is a pace to God’s truth and correction. I think He is merciful to measure the pace and the amount of correction, truth, and revelation that we can take so that He doesn’t overwhelm us and lose us to discouragement. Truth can be weighty at times. God’s liberating correction can lead to deep conviction, remorse, sorrow, and dramatic changes in our mentality, behavior, and lives. Can you imagine if The Lord hit us with everything we were ever going to learn from Him all at once? We would be like those trees I mentioned—dead-standing overwhelmed in a sea of truth we didn't have the ability to absorb in a healthy way. It would be too much too soon.
“Everything He teaches us is measured and weighed for optimum growth, and uniquely tailored to our call and purpose. ”
One of the more intriguing things Jesus Christ ever said to His disciples was, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). Wisely, Jesus recognized that His disciples had so much more to learn, but they couldn’t absorb it all. So the rain cloud of God’s lips closed for a moment, to allow what He had previously said to sink in and produce growth before He went on to the next downpour of truth.
I am thankful that the Lord teaches us this way. Everything He teaches us is measured and weighed for optimum growth, and uniquely tailored to our call and purpose. However, many times impatience, comparison, selfish ambition, and pride beg for more and more when the Father knows we are not ready for what we are asking. Most of the time it’s because we haven’t been faithful with what He has already given us. Jesus reminds us that the “one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10).
I think this principle is the same reason why the Apostle Paul admonished fathers the way he did. He writes, “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” The Amplified Version translates it: “Do not be hard on them” (Col. 3:21). We can exacerbate our children when we expect too much of them too soon, or put heavy responsibilities on a child who is still learning to walk out basic principles. As Albert Einstein once said, “Premature responsibility produces superficiality.” God, in His mercy, protects us from this superficial cycle by not expecting too much from one who has not had time to grow properly in time.
Trust the pace of correction and truth that the Lord pours out. Also, trust the pace of truth and correction that the Lord reveals to others as well. Many new and young believers are being buried under the weight of judgment and expectations of seasoned believers unjustly because they assume in error that others should be ready for the same amount of truth they are. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote in The Cost of Discipleship:
If the disciples make judgments of their own, they set up standards of good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard which I can apply to others. He is judge of myself, revealing my own virtues to me as something altogether evil. Thus I am not permitted to apply to the other person what does not apply to me. For, with my judgment, according to good and evil, I only affirm the other person’s evil, for he does exactly the same. But he does not know of the hidden inquiry of the good but seeks his justification in it. If I condemn his evil actions, I thereby confirm him in his apparently good actions which are yet never the good commended by Christ. Thus we remove him from the judgment of Christ and subject him to human judgment. But I bring God’s judgment upon my head, for I do not live more on and out of grace of Jesus Christ, but out of my knowledge of good and evil which I hold onto. To everyone, God is the kind of God he believes in.
Truth is needed, yet patience and trust in the Holy Spirit are also important to ensure we all grow at a rate that is absorbable and sustainable, which the Good Shepherd is faithful to determine. What good is wisdom and knowledge at a pace that we can’t apply? So trust the seasons under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3). There is a season to receive the rain, and there is a season to let the rain soak in. There is a season for sun, and there is a season to wait. There is a pace and timing to all the Lord does, we can trust the God of all Creation, He is a life-giving Spirit.
By Joseph E.O. Mead