Grains of Sand

“ As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it ” —Isaiah 55:10, 11, NIV. Easter weekend Spring brings with it an uncertainty with the dawn of each new day. Has it snowed overnight? Will it rain? Here in more northern climes, we are never quite sure until June that we won’t wake up to a blanket of white on the ground. Even then there isn’t any guarantee; some people remember snow in July! We grumbled a bit when it snowed heavily this past Easter weekend. At the same time we remember last summer when a Winter almost devoid of snow and a painfully dry Spring meant a summer of dry forests and the constant danger of forest fires even before summer began. In a part of the world where ci...

Rowboats should have been the vehicle of choice here in Caracas yesterday. In the middle of the afternoon the skies opened and torrents of rain fell. The official government response was to report that nothing unusual was happening; the pictures posted by people out on the street told a different tale. Government should walk in the shoes of the hoi palloi once in a while. When the sheets of falling rain eased enough for it to be possible for me to see the street that runs in front of my building, the sight was impressive. A torrent of muddy water was racing down the hill from the mountains behind my apartment complex. It flowed down the street, crossed the intersection at the bottom of the hill and then continued to flow down into a nest of houses cradled in a hollow below the intersection. I hate to think how much water and mud they had to clean up. I was safe and dry—the advantage of living on the 13th floor. I could watch the rain, even enjoy it, from the safety and security of my ...