Featured this week is Rev. Chris Alderman, the pastor of Little Rock Baptist Church, Little Rock.
“The Great Work of God: Rain”
Job 5:8-10 says, “I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause, Who doeth great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number; Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields.” If you said to someone: “My God does great and unsearchable things without number,” and they responded, “Really? Like what?” would you say, “Like rain?” Job is not joking when he says that rain is one of god’s great and unsearchable wonders. How is rain a great and unsearchable wonder wrought by God? Picture yourself as a farmer in the Near East, far away from any water. If your crops are to grow, water has to come. But from where? Well, the sky. For water to reach a farmer’s field in the Near East, it will have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea over several hundred miles, and then be poured out on the fields. Carried? How much does it weight? If one inch of rain falls on one square mile of
farmland, that would be 27,878,400 cubic feet of water, which is 206,300,160 gallons, which is 1,650,501,280 pounds of water. That’s heavy. So how does it get up in the sky and stay up there if it is so heavy? It gets up there by evaporation. That’s the process whereby water stops being water for a while so it can go up and not down. So how does it come down? Condensation. That’s the process whereby water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust particles between .00001 and .0001 centimeters wide. That’s small. Since it comes from the Mediterranean Sea it is salt water. That would kill the crops, so the salt has to be taken out during the evaporation process. So, the sky picks up a billion pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, carries it for 300 miles and then dumps it? Well, it doesn’t dump it because the force would crush the crop. The sky dribbles the billion pounds of water down in little drops. They have to
be big enough to fall for one mile without evaporating, and yet small enough to keep from crushing the wheat stalks. How do all these microscopic specks of water get heavy enough to fall? Coalescence. That’s the process whereby specks of water start bumping into each other, join up and get bigger until they are big enough to fall. Just like that? Well, not exactly, because they would just bounce off each other instead of joining up if there was no electrical field present. What? Never mind. I think, instead, I will just take Job’s word for it. I still don’t see why drops ever get to the ground, because if they start falling as soon as they are heavier than air, they would be too small not to evaporate on the way down. But if they wait to come down, what holds them up until they are big enough not to evaporate? Yes, I am sure they have a name for that, too. But I am satisfied for now that, by any name, rain is a great and unsearchable thing that
God has created. I think we should be thankful, for we serve a great and majestic God Who does wonderful and unsearchable things without number…like rain. “Every good and perfect gift cometh from above.” “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Thank God for His unspeakable gift! He sends the rain on the just and the unjust alike. But to receive His Son you must confess your sin, repent of it, and believe on the Lord and He will save you. Salvation: another one of God’s great and unsearchable works…no, make that THE GREATEST work He’s ever done
