By Callie Mitchell, SAVED News International Correspondent, Jerusalem, Israel
Israel has two seasons: a dry season and a rainy season, or summer and winter. When I first moved here, and even nearly 12 years later, I mourned the loss of fall and spring. I miss the colors, the change of season, and I miss warm summer thunderstorms. It only rains here when it’s cold, and the rain adds cold on top of the cold! The winters are often a struggle for me. By January, I feel I’m just trying to survive until the rains slow down, mostly because I have to be out in it as a pedestrian with small children!
This year, the first rain came as great joy! I think we may have all celebrated as a nation. The news even described the storm as coming in with a “rogue cloud”! I was working on putting my baby down for a nap with my older three children outside playing when I heard a rumble. “Is that thunder or the garbage truck?” I wondered. Then my children ran in and shared that they had seen lightning and it started to rain! What a joy!
RAIN
The rain arrived just as the nation started opening after our second intense lockdown. October was not an easy month here. During the fall High Holy Days, we could not meet to worship together, we could not go more than a kilometer from our homes, and we could not even invite guests over to celebrate privately. Who would have ever thought this would happen in a Democracy? Communist China, Muslim theocracies like Iran, sure, but democratic systems where the government is accountable to the people, and the people have a voice? The loss of freedom has been challenging.
Eventually, small businesses banded together and declared to the government that they would open regardless of restrictions and fines. People need to work to feed their families. In a nation with universal healthcare and major security needs, we need a robust economy. The people have been protesting a variety of issues. Civil disobedience has been rampant. Tensions have been high between our varied demographics and it’s been exhausting. Praise the Lord we haven’t had conflicts with Gaza or Hezbollah during this time. He has shown mercy in that way.
In my prayer time, I’ve felt the Lord reminding me that the end of this season is near and to patiently endure in truth.
EARLY RAIN
“Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains.” James 5:7 ESV
And then it rained.
The “early rains” in that verse is referring to what we experience in late October, those first rains with giant drops, breaking through the heat of the summer. With that first rain came hope. Hope that whatever purpose the Lord has established in His sovereignty over our present circumstances, that its time is almost fulfilled. The season is changing and the Lord is on the move.
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