Hi, I’m Beth! And this May is unlike a May that we’ve ever had. We are all getting used to what might be our new normal, this change that’s happened as a result of COVID-19, and in the midst of all this change and things that are new, we have parts of this season we’re counting on – things like graduations, right, things like the start of our summer. I have two college graduates, and I can’t believe how fast four years have gone by. I remember when we dropped Emma and Evan off at Taylor University four years ago…
Evan went first, because he was playing football, and I remember what happened – we spent the whole day with the whole football team, and then it was time the coach suddenly said, what I felt was without any warning, okay Freshman parents, say goodbye to your freshman sons, sons report to the locker room in ten minutes, and I was like what?!
Even though we’d been talking about this all summer, I was not ready to say goodbye to him. And as we were standing out by the car, and I was having all these great big feelings, I just patted him on the chest, and I said, something I don’t think he’s ever heard me say before – I said a word I shouldn’t have, and I said, “I’m not ready for you to go yet!” And he looks over at his dad, like, “what are you gonna do about the fact that mom just said that?” And his dad was crying.
I know now, as we pulled away, he called his sister and said, “college just hit me a lot harder than we thought it was gonna be, because mom’s cussing and dad’s crying!” And here we are four years later, and God walked with us inside that season every single day. And I’m reminded of this Hebrew word that I love, and say all the time in English. The word is geshem – and literally means rain, and whenever it’s raining, I say, “Look at all the geshem!” Geshem, think about the story of Moses and Pharaoh and “Let my people go!” that story we find in the book of Exodus; God is telling His people, “I’m going to take you out of Egypt and lead you into the Promised Land.” And Egypt had something in it called the Nile, and those days, whoever had access to water, had access to power – maybe in the same way today, think about fule or about oil. In those days it was water. So the Nile had 30,000 times the access to water than what they would find in the Promised Land.
As God’s people were being led away from that power and into what was totally unknown for them, God would later say to them, you know what happens over in the Nile, in order to irrigate your crops, you had to hand irrigate them, that was like that back breaking work of taking care of yourself. Over here in the Promised Land, I’m literally going to make the rain fall from the skies whenever it is that you need it, I’ll provide it for you. You’re going to have to be dependent on Me, you’re going to have to trust Me. And I always tell the Lord, in moments when it feels like, oh it feels easier to try to take care of myself, I remind myself I wanna be in a place where I’m expectant of God’s geshem, where I’m expectant for Him to show up, in all the ways and moments I need Him. In this Spring season, going into our summer season, where we have expectations, and needs, and wants, and curiosities, and griefs about the things we’re losing and hope for the things that are coming we have all those big feelings, we can trust that God will be with us every step of this journey; we can trust that when we need the geshem, when we need what it is that He has, He will provide it for us. And sometimes, I need things like hope, and sometimes I need joy, patience, and wisdom, and discernment, and mercy, and self-control. On any given day, I need provision, protection; we can ask Him, as His kids, for what it is we need and He will bring it to us, because He loves us, and delights in our prayers.