Rain for the Spirit

     The days are turning dry. My cactus, after a fat winter, have bloomed and are beginning to shrivel down. The bursage and brittle bush once brilliant with Spring flowers are looking more like natural desert bushes, leggy and lean. By the time real Summer arrives, they will be dead, almost.
     It's called "estivation" and that means a strategy among plants that allows them to endure the tough desert conditions. They put their life into seeds and roots. The seeds scatter all over the land and wait, without changing, for conditions to be right. It may rain, it may even thunder and pour, but the seeds will not sprout if it is not enough. Among plants it might take twenty years or more for a seed to sprout.
     As for the roots, that's also a pretty nifty development. The roots endure underground, also waiting for the right conditions. They have enough food energy stored to restore what appears above ground, even after it has dried to a crisp. If fire should come by, or an S.U.V., or a cow, and the dry stems and leaves are taken, it can grow a whole new top. The creosote bush, I am told, does this with such skill and determination that researchers suggest some creosote plants are more than forty-thousand years old! We should be so viable...!
    
    So a person living in the desert has a lot to think about. One might walk out into the countryside on pale pink gravel and stand where there is nothing living at all--the whole land is bare. Another year, after a wet winter, go back to the same place and you can walk three feet above the surface of the land! The plants are so thick your feet don't touch the ground. Incredible!
     I am looking for this same effect in the Soul. Our faith is like the creosote root that endures many seasons waiting for God's grace. When it comes, no matter how bitter the past, faith is there ready to grow.

     I think whenever we pray, we should include a prayer for spirit rain...