Prayer for Unbelief

Quiet myself.

This feels Nice.  Good.

Cease striving.  Just be.

This is the place of balance and rest.

    The moment I know 

        that You love me.

        that You sovereignly reign over all things.

            Over all persons.  Including me.

        that nothing can separate You from me.

            Because You created me, exactly as You wanted me to be.

            Because You know me, even better than I know myself.

            Because the child I am, even residing in a man's body, needs You.

                needs Your love.

                needs Your grace and Your favor.

                needs Your validation and affirmation.

                And You always give it.

                    You never withhold it.

Please help me.

    In this place.  At this time.  With my spirit.

    No matter what happens…

        I am perfectly loved.

        I am completely accepted.

        I am, at this moment, right now, enough.

            Because You are here.

                You are now.

                You live, inside my body, forever.

You are All.  All that I have, and All that I need.

Amen.

The "Taco-Bell-Trip" to Hot Springs

The Taco Bell "Party Pack" was the star of the trip!

It turned out that this trip was about as perfectly planned as I could have hoped for.  Well, except for one thing.  For some reason I had it in my head while planning that it was an 8-hour drive to Hot Springs from Wheaton.  But alas!  It is a 10-hour drive from Wheaton to Hot Springs, and I discovered this to my chagrin when I entered "Hot Springs" into my GPS and found that we would be arriving at least two hours later than I hoped!  That stress was short-lived, because we had to be in the car all day anyway, and there's not really too much difference between arriving at 8pm versus 10pm.  

However, because of that time difference, it was evident that we would not be able to cook dinner at the campsite our first night.  So on the way we stopped at the extremely slow drive-thru at Taco Bell in Pocahontas, Missouri and got the "Party-Pack" of soft-shell supreme tacos.  That's 12 tacos.  It was perfect.  At first Cassia didn't want any, so William and I were eating hers.  As we were approaching Hot Springs, she decided that she did want a taco, but there was only 1 left.  And when she ate it, she thought it was amazing and insisted that we get Taco Bell again on the way back so that she could eat her share of supreme soft-shell tacos!  So that's we did, except on the way back we stopped at the extremely slow drive-thru at Taco Bell in Blytheville, Arkansas.  [What is with the extremely slow drive-thru at Taco Bell?!?!?  No idea.]

So we arrived at Hot Springs after dark and hastily set up our tent and went promptly to bed.  We slept in and cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast.  We spent the first day strolling around town to see what was there, and then in the afternoon we drove around the park to scope out the places to which we wanted to hike the next day.  There is a whole row of bath-houses in Hot Springs, which are amazing relics of the past.  However, it is insanely expensive to actually bathe in any of them, and there is a minimum age requirement of 14.  So neither William nor Cassia could have gone in, anyway.  So that was a little bit disappointing!

The major observation of our first day at Hot Springs was how much the town gave all of us distinctly "South Africa" vibes.  The central part of town is pretty chic, where all the tourism is.  But quite literally, a block away from the tourist area the town looks pretty rundown, almost decrepit.  It felt very sad.  It's clear that the wealth of the town is concentrated around the tourism of the national park and very little else.  It felt very much like towns in South Africa. 

 

Once-glorious buildings now empty and dilapidated

The weather was hot, so once we got back to the campsite we took a dip in the creek at the campground.  And the creek was awesome!  It was crystal clear water running down light rapids along the length of the campground.  This particular campground did not have any showers, but the creek more than made up for that.  We swam in the creek and saw all the usual things: crawfish, bluegill, minnows, snails, etc.  And truthfully, the creek totally made the campground!  The campground itself was mediocre at best.  The campground was not large.  The campsites were really close together.  It's separated from the center of the park so you have to either hike a mile or drive through town to get anywhere interesting.  But it was so much fun camping at this campground, because of the ability to cool off in the creek during the hot afternoon!  We made cheesy stroganoff for dinner, planned our hiking route for the following day, and then capped off the evening with a round of Dominion, which is our new "go-to" family game.  William won!

Our second morning we ate Pop-Tarts paired with fried apples-and-onions for breakfast.  Our only planned activity for the day was hiking, and we picked out the spots we wanted to go without worrying too much about distances, because none of the trails are very long at Hot Springs.  We first hiked up North Mountain to a spot called Goat Rock, then traversed over to Hot Springs Mountain and ate our lunch by the mountain tower on the summit.  After lunch we went down into town, crossed the road, and then climbed up West Mountain to the trail shelter and overlook that is on the crown of the mountain but short of the actual summit.  After that, we hiked straight back to the campsite.  All told, we hiked about 5 miles.  William and Cassia thought it was a little long, but it seemed perfect to me.  This was the first time that they had really done proper "hiking"––where they had to carry food and water, and the only way back was by walking back the way we came.  I was satisfied to watch both William and Cassia be pushed out of their comfort zone a bit physically and then rise to the challenge!  Later, at dinner, I asked them both if they felt like they had accomplished something that day, and they both answered enthusiastically, "YES!"

After returning to the campsite mid-afternoon, we again swam in the creek and then took a short jaunt into town for Mamoo's Homemade Ice Cream, which was pricey but DELICIOUS.  We then went back to the campsite and ate hot dogs for dinner.  I had bought a couple games at the dollar store called "Escape from the Museum" and "Murder at the Manor," which both looked like cheap party games.  Anyway, on Friday night we played "Escape from the Museum," which involved solving 12 different kinds of puzzles in order to decode a cipher that allowed you as a group to "escape."  And I have to say, this was surprisingly super-fun!  And actually, we weren't able to finish because it started to get dark and we couldn't read the final puzzle.  We had to stop and then finish in the morning after the sun came up!  "Escape from the Museum" was a big hit, with all of us!

Mamoo's Homemade Ice Cream  (the photo-bomb was planned!)

We hadn't made any specific plans for Saturday, which was a good thing because I had a terrible night of sleep on Friday night.  That's highly unusual for me while camping.  I often get my best sleep in a tent.  The three of us had some deep and pretty meaningful conversations while hiking, and I think my brain was just processing all of that.  From what I remember watching the moon go across the sky, I'm pretty sure I dozed off for a while a couple different times during the night.  But I didn't get much sleep at all.  Also, our campsite was invaded by a raccoon looking for food.  We hadn't been very careful cleaning up.  I think he was after our graham crackers.  Anyhow, that was an interesting night!

We woke up on Saturday morning and had pancakes and eggs for breakfast.  William and Cassia wanted to go back and explore the town a bit more, so we did that.  We stopped in the shops to get some mementos, and then made our way back to the campsite once again.  And we just hung out at the campsite for all of Saturday afternoon, which felt absolutely perfect.  If we had made our trip one day shorter and left on Saturday morning, it would have felt rushed and tired.  If we had stayed one extra day and left on Monday instead of Sunday, I think we would have been terribly bored.  But having one day of unplanned activity to just relax felt just right.  We read books, played games, and ate quesadillas for dinner.  We tried to play "Murder at the Manor" because quickly discovered that it was basically a cheap knock-off of Clue and NOT conducive at all to playing outdoors.  So we skipped it.  I packed up everything in the car except the tent and what we needed for Sunday breakfast, and then we all went to bed kinda early.

At this point, I need to relate some of my random-but-interesting observations from the trip:

• Illinois has a lot of state troopers.  Missouri has a lot of cars with no license plates.  I estimate that the number of cops I saw in Illinois is roughly equal to the number of cars I saw in Missouri that had no license plate whatsoever!  Weird.

• US Highway 67 that goes through the Ozarks in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas is an American treasure.  If you get a chance to drive it, do it.  It's wholly unremarkable as a road, but it's beautiful, and almost completely deserted of traffic.

• We camped across the path from "that guy" at the campground--you know, the retired guy who comes and talks to you uninvited and offers you all kinds of things that you don't want?  He was a lovely man, but it was too much.  I will say that he came over to the campsite and just dumped two massive logs on our campfire, which was nice.  And we used them!  When we departed, I surreptitiously left him a couple RV levelers that our other neighbors had inadvertently left behind.

• One of the most interesting things I saw was a guy traveling alone with a small puppy who stopped at the campsite simply to charge his Tesla.  He stayed for about 2 hours, and I thought he was going to camp.  But alas, no!  He plugged in, unplugged, and left.

• To amuse ourselves during the long drive, we counted license plates.  Our final count was 42 different US license plates (all except Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada, Wyoming, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, West Virginia, and Washington DC).  I had the closest guess with 40!

We woke up early on Sunday morning for the long drive ahead.  I have a customary breakfast that I eat on the final morning of camping: fried SPAM with honey on flour tortillas.  I love it!  And now William and Cassia do, too!  We ate our breakfast and packed up the campsite, getting in the car exactly at our target time of 9am.  [William laments that that NEVER happens!] We were all set to go when I realized that I didn't know where my wallet was.  So it took me another 30 minutes to rummage through the entire car to find my wallet, which I did eventually.  Then we were on our way.  We again stopped at Taco Bell on the way back, arriving back home in Wheaton just after 9pm.  It was an amazing trip!

The "Day-Trip" to Indiana Dunes

Twizzlers FTW!!!

So our plan was to hit two national parks this summer.  But after coming back from Mammoth Cave we realized that it would be super-easy to do a weekend day-trip to Indiana Dunes during the month of June before W&C go to their mom's for the last half of the summer.  So we did that today!  We debated between going Saturday (yesterday) or Sunday (today), but it was cloudy and somewhat dreary yesterday, so we went today instead.  We packed up the car before church then hit the road directly afterward.

We needed to get cheese for our picnic sandwiches.  I stopped at CVS because I have a monthly discount there.  And wouldn't you know?  They had picnic blankets on sale, and I bought a couple packs of rainbow Twizzlers that I had never even seen before.  Alas, they had no sliced cheese.  But time was wasting, so we got on the highway and I thought we'd stop whenever we went by a supermarket. 

Well, we drove to Indiana Dunes and never saw a supermarket, so we had to eat our ham sandwiches without cheese.  The primary topic of conversation in the car was how we each ranked from best to least our favorite flavors of the Rainbow Twizzlers.  In alphabetical order, they were: Blue Raspberry, Grape, Lemonade, Orange, Strawberry, Watermelon.  There was much taste-testing (and much debate), but here are the final rankings:

ME -- 1) strawberry; 2) orange; 3) lemonade; 4) watermelon; 5) blue raspberry; 6) grape.

W -- 1) blue raspberry 2) lemonade; 3) strawberry; 4) orange; 5) watermelon; 6) grape.

C -- 1) blue raspberry; 2) grape; 3) watermelon; 4) orange; 5) strawberry; 6) lemonade.

We arrived at Indiana Dunes at about 2pm.  We planned to stay about four hours, which is what we did.  Nothing fancy, just relaxing on the beach.  We did a little bit of a lot of different things: throwing the aerobie, flying a kite, playing in the sand, looking for interesting rocks, reading a book, swimming and wading in the water, etc.  Typical "beach stuff."

Anyone who knows me well understands that the beach is NOT my happy place.  There's pretty much nothing about the beach that I find particularly enjoyable.  I don't like swimming.  I don't like the hot sun.  I don't like crowds.  I don't like the sand.  I was thankful that we made it a "beach afternoon" and not a full "beach day."  But it was a wonderful time.  A memorable highlights of the day for me was being able to see the Chicago skyline from across the water.  Also, there were a couple times where the beach was in the shadow of a cloud but the sun was sparkling on the water out on the lake.  It was magnificantly beautiful, and it looked much different than if the sun was shining directly on the shore.  As you looked out on the lake, it was like the top of the water was tinged with yellow-golden light.  Dazzling.  

I was struck by the symmetry of the green and blue triangles

"I thought I would dig the Pit of Tartarus" (cf. Percy Jackson) 

 

"Put your glasses on me, that will be funny!"

There is an elegance to the dune grass

The "Half-Trip" to Mammoth Cave

To Mammoth Cave  or  and bust!

 

W&C and I planned to cross off two national parks from our bucket list this summer...Mammoth Cave (in Kentucky) and Hot Springs (in Arkansas).  Memorial Day weekend was a good candidate for Mammoth Cave because it's only a 6-hour drive from Chicago, and there's not a whole lot to do in the area except go to Mammoth Cave.  Friday the 24th was the last day of school, so we planned to leave on Saturday morning, camp for two nights and see the cave, and then come back on Memorial Day.  I checked the weather before we left, and there were clouds projected for Sunday and a possibility of rain on Sunday night, but it didn't look like anything major.  Good to go!

It was raining in Wheaton on Friday evening, so we got everything ready but didn't take anything to the car yet.  We slept in on Saturday morning, packed the car, and headed out shortly after 10am.  We had a pretty uneventful drive except that an hour was added to our drive because of a 10-mile traffic jam at the Illinois-Indiana border due to a combination of roadwork and holiday weekend traffic.  We actually made it all the way into Kentucky before we stopped to stretch our legs and use the bathroom.  We got to Mammoth Cave National Park at around 5:30pm.  Our campsite was already a little wet from rain the previous few days, so there was some mud but the campsite was perfectly fine.  The sky was clear, and we had a lovely evening in camp.  W&C set up the tent while I built the fire and then made cheesy beef stroganoff for dinner.  We probably turned in at around 9:30pm and played Farkel in the tent for a while before going to sleep.

Sunday morning dawned cloudy and warm.  Clouds were forecast for the whole day, but no rain.  I realized that we had forgotten the eggs in the refrigerator at home, and we were planning to eat eggs-and-bacon for breakfast the first day.  I myself have a personal tradition of eating fried Spam with honey on flour tortillas for breakfast on the final day of camping.  That was planned for Monday morning.  So we decided just to switch our breakfast menus and eat eggs-and-bacon on Monday morning instead, and we would find a place to pick up some eggs during the day.  No problem.  We ate breakfast, tidied up the campsite, and headed out for our 9am tour of Mammoth Cave.

Mammoth Cave is an amazing natural wonder.  There's nothing quite like it, because the cave is simply just so gigantic.  The first major chamber is called the "Rotunda" because of its round shape, and it's probably 100 feet in diameter and at least 20 feet high.  Walking through the main passages of Mammoth Cave is like walking in a shopping mall, that's how big it is.  And because the ceiling is sandstone, the cave stays pretty dry.  There are hardly any stalactites or stalagmites at all.  It's amazing because, again,  there just isn't anything else like it.  A few of the underground attractions include: 

• huge wooden salt-peters vats dating all the way back to the War of 1812; 
• stone huts built for tuberculosis patients who tried living underground as a means of treatment (which didn't work);
• candle-smoke graffiti reading "Luther Ewing's String Band 1874".

We finished the tour shortly after 11am, and exited the cave to severe thunderstorms.  We raced back to the visitor center, did a little shopping, and then raced again back to the car.  We immediately drove to the campsite to check on our tent and our gear.  The campsite had more water, but the tent was still on high ground and everything inside was dry.  W&C waited in the car while I grabbed all of our sleeping gear out of the tent and stuffed it into the car to keep it dry.  No one wanted to leave, and we still had reservations for our afternoon tour at a nearby cave called "Hidden River Cave," which boasts the world's longest underground swinging bridge.  We had a little time to kill, and we needed to get fuel and eggs for the morning anyway.

So we drove the 10 miles to Cave City and fueled up the Sorento.  While there, my phone got a signal and I saw that an email had come through from Hidden River Cave saying that my reservation had been refunded!  I called them, and they said that they have to close the cave for the day because of flooding.  Also, they were not allowed to take anyone down into the cave during lightning storms.  So that was a major blow for us.  And by this time, it was storming and raining so hard that we were starting to see tree branches fall down.  We considered taking a tour of the Diamond Caverns (which is another nearby cave tour), but by this time we were already starting to think about just packing up and coming home simply because so much water had fallen from the sky.  And the forecast called for more severe rain between 10pm and 3am.  We decided to save our money and go home.

That was a good decision.  We drove back to the campsite to pack up the tent, and the entire campsite was now flooded with multiple inches of pooled water.  We scoped out other campsites to see if we might switch, but there was a not a dry campsite in our entire loop.  That was the fastest I have ever packed up a tent.  I simply pulled it up, pulled out the poles, and then stuffed the whole thing into one of our duffels.  Driving out the campground, I actually had to stop and move a felled tree limb that had fallen over the road and had just missed an RV trailer.  We were back on the road by 1:30pm, less than twenty-fours after we had arrived!

We had an uneventful drive home.  Going through Indianapolis I saw signs for the Indy 500, and realized that the race was happening right then!  Doing some quick online searching, we saw that the race had been delayed, probably by the same storm system that had hit the Mammoth Cave area as well.  Later, we saw that the race had a really exciting finish that we watched on YouTube, as Josef Newgarden won his second Indy 500 in a row.

Back home that night, C went to sleep while W&I watched The Sixth Sense.  We had been talking about that movie in the car as an example of "dramatic irony."  [W had been instructing us on the three types of irony he had learned in school: situational irony, verbal irony, and dramatic irony.].  With the money we saved on our canceled cave tour, we decided to eat out at Culver's the next day.  We also decided that we still want to go back to do the Hidden River Cave tour and walk the world's longest underground swinging bridge.  Maybe we'll make it a stop on our way to Great Smoky Mountain National Park...perhaps next summer!

Eating at Culver's back in Wheaton was our consolation prize

The "Quik-Trip" to Gateway Arch

National Park Número Uno!!!

After the "radical reorientation" of our lives, W&C and I decided that we will try to get to as many national parks as we can before they "fly the coop".  It's gonna be our thing.  Well, this summer was already pretty full, but thankfully, there is one national park just outside the Illinois on the western bank of the Mississippi River.  The Gateway Arch!  And I learned that at 91 acres, it's also the smallest national park in the entire US.  I didn't want to take any additional time off work, so we planned to make the trek to St Louis over a standard weekend ... 4.5 hours drive down on Saturday, then 4.5 hours back the next day.  Not my first choice in terms of schedule, but necessary.  It was the first "vacation" for just the three of us, and we needed to start making new memories.

We packed the car on Friday night and left as early as well could on Saturday morning.  We drove straight to the City Museum, which is a re-purposes industrial building in the heart of downtown St Louis that has been turned into, for lack of a better term, a 4+ story playground.  Seriously, it's the coolest thing ever.  We got there around noon, and we didn't leave until they close at 10pm.  Tunnels, slides, ladders, secret passageways ... you name it, they have it, in terms of playground equipment.  And it's all inside.  Oh, except the rooftop.  You can take an elevator to the 10th floor and then go out on the roof.  And there's an entire other playground up on the roof, including a full size school bus that literally stretches out over the street!  There's a ferris wheel up there, plus two old water tanks that you can climb around on.  And my personal favorite, a 30-foot slide that they can call "The Mantis" (because there's a giant welded sculpture of a praying mantis that forms the tower for the slide).  

After we stayed as late as we could there, we drove to a local KOA where we rented a cabin for a night.  That was perfect for a quick trip like this.  We didn't have to worry about setting up a tent of cooking or anything.  We literally just pulled our bedrolls out of the car, took them inside, and sacked out.  Also, there was a small air conditioning unit, so none of us had trouble sleeping in the muggy August heat.  It was a terrific value!  We will definitely do the "KOA cabin camping" thing again!

Sunday morning we woke up and ate at McDonald's.  W&C absolutely love Mickey D's.  We didn't have to go there, but that's where they wanted to go, so we did.  Then we made out way downtown to do the Gateway Arch.  And I have to say, the Gateway Arch is incredible!  As an engineer, I was completely fascinated!  And if you haven't gone, you really should do it at some point in your life.  I wasn't prepared for how small the compartments of the elevator were.  There were five people crunched into that little round room.  [I snapped a photo of W&C in the model that they have in the lobby area so that you know what you're getting yourself into!  See below.]  Anyhow, the Gateway Arch was a smashing hit with all three of us.

After we came down, we had some time to kill before our river tour, so we got ice cream at a local food truck and walked along the river.  The steam boat river tour in St Louis is also amazing.  W&C were kind of tired by then, but I was completely fascinated.  The tour guide was particularly good, I think.  He included a lot of details about the history of St Louis that I didn't know before.  The most important factoid is that St Louis sits (essentially) at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and it is the oldest continually-inhabited urban area in North America.  Which makes sense, when you think about it.  Also, there are lots of interesting bridges in St Louis where engineers tried out new designs and support mechanisms.  Extremely cool.

We headed home on Sunday afternoon after the river tour.  It was a tiring weekend, but well worth it.  All three of us definitely liked St Louis as a city, and we said that we definitely want to come back again to explore the city some more.  I would be especially interested to tour the old City Courthouse and the Cathedral.  

One national park down, 62 to go!

From atop the City Museum

Tight quarters to ascend the Gateway Arch!

From atop the Gateway Arch

Ice cream break!

  

Radical Reorientation

 My favorite theologian is a 12th-century French Catholic monk named William of St Thierry.  [Yes, my son is named after him, in part.]  Sometime in his 40's, his life was radically reoriented.  He had been an abbot in the Benedictine Order, governing the monastery at St Thierry just outside Rheims in France.  He became a dear friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian prior, and wanted for many years to join the Cistercian order instead, but Bernard forbade it.  Bernard insisted that William remain among the Benedictines in order to reform the order.  However, as William grew older his health grew worse, and he desperately wanted to devote less time to "abbot"-ing and more time to writing.  Finally, in 1135 (sometime in his 40's), Bernard relented.  William resigned his abbacy at St Thierry to become a canon regular (that is, an ordinary monk under the governance of an abbot) at the Cistercian monastery at Signy (also not far from Rheims).

I'm in my 40's, and my life has also undergone a radical reorientation.  In all seriousness, the trajectory of my entire life has utterly and completely changed in the span of three years!  I was married with children, an expatriate American academic owning a home and working in Africa.  Now I'm divorced with children, owning a home in America and working as an engineer (again).  It's like my life took a hard left at Albuquerque (that's a Bugs Bunny joke).  And it's so strange, because I think I was doing before what God purposed me to do, i.e. serving as an advocate for Biblical Hebrew on the continent of Africa, for the continent of Africa.

But just in the last week, I've been reflecting anew on the life of William of St Thierry.  He wanted to write, and God granted him ill health so that he could write.  And now I (and all the world) has his books, because he took the time to write them.  My story is not so different.  For the last twenty years, ever since I was a young seminary student, people have told me that I need to write books.  And frankly, I've never put much time or effort into that because I've always had seemingly better things to do with my time.  But now I can't escape the suspicion that my life is paralleling William's, that God is using my circumstances to indicate that it's time for me to start writing now.  I have a list!  A list of books that I want to write before I die.  Now is the time.  Or at least, I think that's what God might be saying.  I'm afraid to believe that that's really what God is saying, but it feels like it.

I'm afraid because I feel very daunted by the prospect.  I know I can do it.  I know that I have both the skill and talent for it.  And I have things to say!  I just find it incredibly hard to believe that anyone would want to read anything that I write, or that anything I write would actually be worth reading, let alone publishing.  And if I were to publish, I don't particularly care to face the criticism that comes with publishing books (especially in the theological discipline) or the rejection that comes with not-publishing books.  I just want to take care of my children and live my life in peace.

Sigh.

There's a whole lot more to say here, but this will suffice for now.  Everything is just so strange here left of Albuquerque...

Pray for Rain

 "For the land that you are crossing over to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.  But the land that you are crossing over to occupy is a land of hills and valleys, watered by rain from the sky, a land that the LORD your God looks after.  The eyes of the LORD are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year."  Deut. 11:10-12

"Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it dod not rain on the earth.  Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest."  James 5:16-17

"Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ... 'And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?  Will he delay long in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.  And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"  Luke 18:1, 7-8

So on our way to church this morning Cassia was talking about the drought that has threatened the water supply of a suburban area of over 5 million people here in the Cape.  [Cape Town's water supply comes entirely from rain-fed dams.]  We chatted for a minute about it, and then I said, "You know what we need to do?  We need to start praying every night that God would send rain."  And Cassia immediately piped up and said, "Why don't we pray right now?"  So we did, right there in the car as we were driving. [I didn't close my eyes.]

This got me thinking today.  In the modern world, we don't have too many instances where our cultural experience exactly mimics that experience of the people who wrote the Bible.  But this year, here in the Cape, we have come to precisely the same situation that the ancient Israelites would have faced often in their culture.  God points out to the people of Israel that the place He was taking them was not a place where growing their staple crops would be easy like it was in Egypt.  The land of Israel depends almost entirely on rainfall in order to grow anything!  In fact, certain aspects of the Old Testament make almost no sense at all unless you (the reader) understand this fundamental meteorological reality of the geographical land being talked about in the Bible.

Then, in our children's class today (I teach 5th and 6th graders) we came to the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand in our journey through the Gospel of Mark.  One of the girls in the class almost immediately made a parallel between the situation in that story and the present water crisis we are experiencing here in the Cape.  I complimented her on seeing the connection, and later asked the class what we should be do in light of what Jesus appears to be teaching his disciples with the whole "twelve baskets" business (12 baskets, 12 disciples ... get it?!?).  After going through all the stereotypical churchy answers that involve thinking but not doing, someone finally said, "We should pray."  I said, "Exactly."  [Of course, by saying this I'm not negating the need to conserve water.  Everyone gets that part already.]

So now I guess I need to put my money where my mouth is.  Lent starts on Wednesday.  So I'm going to start praying for rain, and inviting people on Facebook to join me.  Throughout the ages of the Church, Christians have prayed antiphonally (meaning "call-and-response"), and it works like this:  the leader of the prayer prays and ends either with "Lord, in Your mercy..." or "...we pray to the Lord"; and the people respond by saying either "...hear our prayer" or "Lord, hear our prayer," respectively.  Through Lent I'm going to pray for rain on Facebook, and I invite you to respond daily with your own "...hear our prayer."