Rainy Season

This morning I woke up and walked out to see a layer of fog covering the compound.  I was certainly surprised since I haven’t, at least until this point, seen fog in Kenya.  Perhaps this is what rainy season entails.  While typically the rains don’t come for another week or two, the heavy raining has already begun and last week appeared to be the start of rainy season in Kenya.    Nights of unending rain followed by mornings of constant sprinkling, all of which leads to afternoons of downpours.  Rainy season is something that, for many people in this agricultural-based economy, is a source of life as they begin to plant their crops.  It’s also something that, for many people who live in homes made of mud walls, tin roofs fastened with chicken wire and dirt floors, is a source of death as the rain water flows freely into their home bringing sicknesses.  I’m learning that rain is a powerful force that in the same moment can bring both the hope of life and the threat of life.  I hate to think of little Nancy, Lucy, Peter, Brenda and all the precious children we work with who live in the slums lying in their homes at night, shivering as the rain seeps in.  It’s amazing that even after a night of heavy raining these children show up to Oasis in the morning with glorious smiles and joyful laughs.  I know that God loves these children more than anything and he will continue to reveal himself to them even in the cold rain.  For He is the one who brings the rain.  He is the one who brings life.  In this He shows me how desperately dependent I am upon Him because apart from Him there is no life and without Him my life has no meaning.  As Acts 17: 25 says, "He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else."