Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also   Isaiah 45:8

We're coming off of several days of rain and today have a beautifully sunny day, but I have been pondering about "raining down righteousness"  First, the rain from heaven comes to quench our own souls, but then, I think we too have a call to rain down righteousness.

The most important factor needed for a rainstorm is "lift".  Ground air, heat, and humidity have to rise.  As the earthy air collides with the higher atmosphere a storm is formed and rain pours down.

 It's easy to think of righteousness as "right-ness."  That we should rain down with the right way to do things, with reckoning or judgment.  Someone else defines righteousness as leading a life that is pleasing to God. When we lead lives that are pleasing to God, the natural outflow of that are things that soothe and heal our parched world.

As we raise prayers to God, he allows for our lives to be poured out, a rain of righteousness.

Our collisions with heaven burst forth into nourishment for the world, water for thirsty hearts, relief for cracking environments, and hope for seeds abandoned.  

"let the earth open, that salvation

may spring up" 

 As rain falls on dry ground, at first it does little, it is soaked up, never to be seen again.  Sometimes when the ground is really dry, the rain runs off quickly, not even having a chance to soak in.  But after prolonged rain, the ground softens, receives the water and it soaks in deep.  Sometimes it takes a lot of rain to soften ground, to prepare it to yield fruit.  That's why we're not supposed to sprinkle or drip, but rain down with the outflow of a life pleasing to God, that people can't help but be touched by it, soaked by it really, and changed by it.  It's then that the landscape is changed, heartscapes are changed, softened, to allow for salvation to spring up.

What does it mean in our daily lives to rain down that kind of love that allows for salvation to naturally spring up in the places we go and the lives we touch?  Probably first needs a lot of prayer rising, a lot of holy collision, maybe holy collusion, to bring that kind of rain.

and he will make her wilderness like Eden    Isaiah 51:3b 

What a promise this is for wilderness time. Wilderness, a time that is thought of as difficult, lonely, rugged, even desolate--and it says God will make that wilderness like Eden.  God's presence transforms wilderness into holy time, time when we encounter God as closely as we did in the garden.

"and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden..."  Gen 3

In wilderness God led the way, walking beside the Israelites day and night.  In the garden, God walks among the man and woman, so intimately close.  God walking in the garden; so holy, the God of all walking with us, and yet so ordinary--as though an every day stroll.

As God walks with us through wilderness, we learn the promise, the hope, the joy of knowing God intimately that was embodied in the garden, before we tried to be God.  And maybe that's why we need wilderness, to be taken out of what is comfortable and known, what we build and make and strive for, to find ourselves without a map so that we can learn the ways of the one we follow.  We learn to walk humbly with our God, not to hash out plans and directions ourselves.  We are reminded in wilderness the vastness of God and the smallness of ourselves in comparison.  We learn to read the movement the spirit, not the mood of our environment.  We are given wilderness to be reminded that the one we follow created the heavens and the earth.  "And he will make her wilderness like Eden", where we encounter God face to face.  Where we are reminded that we are dust, but that we are God's dust, spirit-breathed and created for good works.

"and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden...but the Lord God called to the man and said to him "where are you?"

And as wilderness transforms to the intimacy of Eden as we encounter the living God fresh, unencumbered by our plans, we receive a great gift.   We realize wilderness is not designed as a time to be lost, but as God asks "where are you" we see that it is in times of wilderness that indeed we are found.

God's Poem

 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.  Ephesians 2:10 NLT

 Often this is translated as "we are God's workmanship".  The NLT version above chooses "masterpiece".  NT Wright in his book The Case For the Psalms reminds us that the Greek work here is poiema, the same word as "poem" and that "we are called to be living, breathing, praying, singing poems".

God desires for our very lives to be works of art, poems, that draw people in and tell his story.  He is the one who has written them all "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"  (Psalm 139)  As I face this juncture, it's hard for me to imagine being a poem for others having no idea what my next verse will be.  It's hard for me to imagine the story I tell through this poem, and yet I feel this beckoning to start telling a story, which seems strange since I know not even the topic.  Perhaps a story of what faith looks like when you can't see the next stanza, of how to be fruitful and see beauty and grace all around, when it feels like you're on pause.  

As I reflect on this idea of a poem, I am drawn to the Message version of Matthew 11 calling people to come to Jesus in order to "learn the unforced rhythms of grace."  Perhaps, for now, it's a matter of living into the rhythm of this grace poem, feeling its cadence, getting swept up in patterns of grace before the words to the next stanza come.  
The spirit drives us into the wilderness, a time away from our normal activities, a time that can feel like pause, because it's a time for us to learn what it means to walk as God's children as we approach a new verse.  The Israelites wandered before promised land, Jesus spent time in the wilderness before his ministry began.   Moses ran away from the city to be in the wilderness, wandering with the sheep, before he found holy ground, before he saw God's blaze.  It seems to be a prerequisite when God is doing something new, changing courses.  I can say it has always been for me, but usually I don't see how far I've wandered until I see the horizon of promised land.  Never before has its onset been so pronounced.  But the spirit drives us to the wilderness, a time away, to teach us new rhythms, a new song, the melody and pattern, and the heart and soul of it, so that at the right time, we are ready to sing it for all the world.  
So, I hope to share the story of what it means to wait in faith, learning the cadence, the rhythm, before the words to the next stanza of my life-poem.