What would happen if it rained simultaneously all over the world? Every nation, every land deluged with a global downpour. Did you see the pictures out of Texas this week? Flashfloods up the roofs of mobile homes because of sustained thunderstorms. People clinging to those rooftops, waiting for rescue boats to sail up used-to-be streets. Imagine an entire planet awash in rain showers.
Seven or eight months ago a group of Americans in central California began to imagine just such a scene and scenario. Imagined what would happen to the world if a simultaneous rain shower covered the earth. They became so moved by the scenes that they began sending out emails to other Americans to imagine the same. And those emails soon crossed the continental borders of cyberspace, eventually circling the earth.
One of the emails reached my inbox at the turn of the year. I took it to our senior leadership team and read it to them. There in our comfortable circle we, too, imagined what the scenes would be were a simultaneous global rainfall to occur. And frankly, our own spirits were moved to the place we decided that this “Operation Global Rain” ought to be a moment everyone in our parish was invited to join.
After all, didn’t the ancient prophet echo God’s command? “Ask the LORD for rain in the time of the latter rain. The LORD will make flashing clouds; He will give them showers of rain, grass in the field for everyone” (Zechariah 10:1).
You can always tell when your lawn becomes parched and brittle, can’t you? And you don’t need to be a meteorologist to determine that the Darfur region of Sudan is desperately dry and barren. Even so, all of us can tell when our own hearts and homes and churches and institutions and land have become spiritually dry and brittle, can’t we? Surely, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain to join forces with congregations across this country and around the world in earnestly claiming God’s promise to pour out the Spirit of Pentecost upon our church and our world before the return of Christ: “When the way is prepared for the Spirit of God, the blessing will come. Satan can no more hinder a shower of blessing descending upon God’s people than he can close the windows of heaven that rain cannot come upon the earth” (I SM 124).
“Operation Global Rain” begins here at Pioneer next Sabbath and concludes on 07-07-07. Pioneer families and members are invited to join this global prayer season by setting aside a time each morning or evening when our prayers can be joined to God’s promises for this mighty outpouring. A study guide and collection of promises for each evening is available by going to www.operationglobalrain.com.
How will God respond globally to this united week of praying? That’s for him to determine. This much I know—your life and mine can become “like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isaiah 58:11). Or in the words of Jesus, “out of [our] heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). With a promise like that, why not plead for his rain now?
If the rocks could talk, what a tale they would tell. Having just returned from four days in the Piedmont valleys of northwestern Italy with a class of architecture students here at Andrews University, I can only imagine the stories that are etched deep into the crags of the rocky sentinels that guard the seven valleys of the Waldenses. Jetlagged I woke up early our first morning beside the Pellice River and walked the valley just as the first orange rays of sunlight were illuminating the ragged snow-capped peaks ringing the green fields and forests beneath them. A thousand years earlier clusters of men, women and children—faithful to the witness of Christ and his truth—had lived in small granite walled and roofed houses, the ruins of which still dot these valleys. And into the pagan darkness of the Middle Ages those Waldensian alpine communities shined the light of unbroken truth, passed on from generation to generation. In fact it is to them we owe the preservation of Holy Scripture, taught to their children, memorized by their youth, painstakingly hand copied onto parchment by the adults and hidden away in their mountain refuges. But the crimson tragedy of Waldensian history has proved true the words of Christ: “And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). And so history painfully chronicles the horror of those brutal crusading armies, sent on their mission of extermination by the powers that dwelt in the plains of Italy. We stood atop the Castelluzzo, a towering rocky promenade over a thousand feet above the Pellice banks, where entire communities of Waldenses were hurled off that precipice. We walked the streets of the ancient La Torre village where the canons boomed at 4 a.m. on April 24, 1655, the prearranged signal to begin the massacre of its unsuspecting citizens. They still remember that extermination as “Bloody Easter.” So unspeakable was that crime against humanity that when Sir Oliver Cromwell read the eye-witness accounts of the slaughter, he declared a day of fasting and prayer across England. And yet, as Tertullian observed, “the blood of martyrs is seed.” The seed of Revelation 12’s woman. The remnant seed of the woman that the dragon will yet turn his wrath upon (v 17). But from that seed of faithful witness God will yet reap a global harvest of saved men, women and children. Having just returned from His alpine harvest fields of long ago, I recommit my life to the Christ of the Waldenses and to the truth he preserved through them. And I invite you to do the same. For if seed is what God yet needs, then let us be that seed He would plant in the valleys where we live.
The number is 3,422. That’s how many members of the U.S. military have paid the supreme sacrifice in the war in Iraq over the last four years. But on this Memorial Day, when the nation remembers our war dead, how many of them did we know? The reality for most of us is that, in fact, we don’t know any of these 3,422 who laid down their lives for country and family. Nor do we know their 25,549 comrades who have been wounded in this war. If we have family over there, all we know is the quiet prayer that God would keep our loved one from adding to either statistic. How can you remember the war dead when you didn’t know them? Pictures help, to be sure. Photos silently moving across the screen of the evening news or lined up in a news weekly put a chiseled face to the statistics. After all, he was somebody’s boy, she was someone’s spouse. Pictures help. But we don’t remember for long, do we? Even when Newseek magazine published photocopies of some of the deceased soldiers’ last letters home, while their names and faces became more personal and the magnitude of their sacrifice dawned upon us more forcefully, we still didn’t remember for long. Do you suppose that’s God’s problem, too? That our memory of the war dead has grown distant and detached. Laid down his life, did he, in the great conflict? Having a picture would sure help. Or a photocopy of a letter home. But just a name? And so we forget. Which is why a piece of broken bread and a cup of wine were once upon a time placed in our hands. “Do this in remembrance of Me,” he commanded (I Corinthians 11:24). So that we would not forget this War’s supreme Sacrifice. And remember the name, if not the face, of the One who landed behind enemy lines and laid “down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Calvary. And the bread and the cup. Of him who died. And rose again. Which makes that war-dead statistic of one utterly unique in time and space—this One who not only laid down his life, but took it up again, his supreme sacrifice becoming humanity’s supreme victory. “So that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Hope, not only for the families of the 3,422, but hope for an entire race of war casualties—which, on this Memorial Day, is surely the most memorable statistic of all!
Sure you want to become a mother? Here are some numbers you may want to crunch before you decide! Statistics released this week in the latest Newsweek magazine reveal that the first two years of a new baby’s life will cost $32,000. And if you’re wanting more than one child, you can plan on an added $24,000 for each additional child. Just for their first two years of moving into your heart and home! And what will it cost to raise that little cherub to the age of 18? Newsweek reports that over those eighteen years a middle-class family will spend an average of $190,980, not including college or lost wages from a parent who remains at home. Per child. Add the costs of college and the lost wages of that parent who stayed at home, and the estimated cost from infancy to age eighteen skyrockets to $1,589,793! Still sure you want to be a mom? Average stay-at-home mothers (what’s an average mom?) work 92 hours a week in their mothering (is anybody surprised?). If you took her “homework” and parceled it out into the various jobs/tasks that she performs each week, she should be earning (based on the median national salary for the categories of labor she provides) a whopping $138,095 a year! As Newsweek quips, “Sure, the validation is purely symbolic, but it may come as some solace at a time when stay-at-home moms are being taken to task in the new book ‘The Feminine Mistake’ for giving up the financial independence their [women’s rights] mothers fought so hard to win” (5-14-07 Newsweek). Are you a mom or a mother-wanna-be? There’s an old, dusty Book that sits on American shelves across the land this Mother’s Day. And in that Book the Author makes certain the genuine value of a godly mother is clearly portrayed. “She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all.’” And then the wisest man who ever lived adds this summation: “Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.” (Proverbs 31:27-30) And so to all our mothers and moms, I know I express the sentiments of a grateful nation and church when on this Mother’s Day we rise up and indeed call you “Blessed.” For you are truly the gift of God to us all.
Don’t let them veto your future, graduates! The press has been abuzz with news over the showdown this week between the executive and legislative branches of our nation’s government. President Bush cast only the second veto of his presidency in rejecting the Iraq war funding bill passed by Congress, a bill that included a mandated troop withdrawal date, which the president opposes. Ah, the power of a veto—the power of saying No! But as the 673 of you Andrews University graduates gather for this memorable academic rite of passage, I and the rest of us here at Pioneer want you to know that we’re cheering you on with the power of a Yes! After all, it’s your graduation promise: “For all the promises of God in Christ are Yes, to the glory of God” (II Corinthians 1:20). Did you catch that? As you head out the door of this campus, God is giving you a giant YES for all the promises you’re going to need for your uncharted journey. A YES for the wisdom and the hope and courage you’ll go on seeking, a YES for the grace and the forgiveness you’ll go on needing, a YES for the new dreams and patience and faith and persistence you’ll be wanting, a YES for all the love that the most important relationships of your life will be requiring. A giant YES wrapped up in Jesus. Not only because all God’s promises are a Yes in him. But also because through your friendship with Christ, you’ll become the radical change agent our world’s been needing all along. So take plenty of pictures, hug all your professors, laugh through the memories, cling to the victories, turn in your key. And as you drive away tomorrow, would you please say a prayer for us, too. That right here at Pioneer we can be God’s giant YES to the new class of young adults who’ll be following in your footsteps in just a few weeks. It was an honor to pray for you while you were here. Honor us please with your prayers for us now that you’re leaving. And in heaven when we next meet—let our “high fives” be for the Savior whose friendship has turned our future into an eternal YES. Together. With him. Amen.
Candle light vigils have become a way of American life, haven’t they? Columbine, Oklahoma City, September 11, and now Virginia Tech. And a grieving public that privately wonders when the insanity will ever end. Anybody know? Our politicians haven’t found the answer. Nor have our law enforcement agencies. Nor have our psychologists and school counselors. Nor have the media. Nor has the public. Nobody knows how to stop the carnage, the massacres, “the terror by night . . . the arrow that flies by day . . . the pestilence that walks in darkness . . . the destruction that lays waste at noonday” (Psalm 91:5, 6). I have an aged friend in South Africa whom I met through our global telecast. Several years ago he was watching, wrote me a letter, and thus began our long-distance friendship. He is of another faith community. But he is a man of prayer. Recently he received an impression from God that he felt compelled to share with me. He wrote in February—I received his letter this week. He is worried for the future of this nation (which may not be an uncommon response from those who watch us from afar). He offered a description of what he believes is yet to come. “I write this under great duress.” But then again, you and I don’t need a prayer warrior half a world away to be reminded that we live in a very troubled nation and world. Then shall we be afraid? It is precisely that query God addresses in Psalm 91 with these reassuring words: “You shall not be afraid . . . No evil shall befall you . . . For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.” So then, rather than fear, let us be moved and motivated by a deepening compassion for a society so often without answers, too often without hope. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” is the apocalyptic assurance of Christ (Revelation 3:20). In this hour when he is “even at the door,” shall we not pledge our careers, our resources, our time, our best energies to him who is the only Hope and Salvation of our civilization—and share him with our world?