As the Rain Falls

"Do any of the worthless idols of the nations bring rain? Do the skies themselves send down showers?  No, it is you, O LORD our God. Therefore our hope is in you, for you are the one who does all  this.” Jeremiah 14:22

The clip from the movie Forrest Gump that I posted really makes me laugh because I can feel his pain (at least about the rain).  It rains nearly everyday here in Auckland.  I have been through the sprinkle, the drizzle, the mist, the downpour, and the storm.  I have seen storms come in that blackout the sun and I have seen it rain with the sun shining and not a cloud in sight.  I think it rains so much in Auckland even the plants have had enough and are wanting a break.  

I will have to admit, I am not a big fan of the rain.  The one redeeming quality of it raining so much in Auckland is found in this verse from Jeremiah.  "Who sends the rain?" the prophet is essentially asking.  Can we make it rain?  Can we will it to rain?  Can we control even one drop that hits the ground?  The answer of course is a resounding "No!"  God is the one who sends the rain.

Every time it rains here in Auckland, the one thing that I love about it, is that it reminds me that I am not in control.  Don't we all need to be reminded of that every once in a while?  I am not the master of my destiny.  I am not the captain of my soul.  I am not the Alpha or Omega, the beginning and end.  The world doesn't revolve around me.  Me, myself and I are not the end all be all to what life is all about.  I don't know about you but I tend to forget that very elementary principle of the Christian faith quite often.  

So...in front of you, the world and God Almighty I want to publicly acknowledge and praise God for the rain, because through it I am reminded of my proper place and the supportive role that I play in God's Master design. 

In Between Worlds

When we arrived back in the States at the beginning of December we were greeted by the immigration officer saying, “Welcome home.”   Just a couple days ago we arrived back in New Zealand and was greeted by another immigration officer saying, “Welcome home.”  That is a weird feeling to say the least. 

As I reflected more on this, I was reminded of the passage in Hebrews 11:13 which says,


"All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth."

I love that phrase, “they admitted” that they didn’t belong to this world.  Living in between two worlds I have to admit that I don’t belong to either one of those.  I realized that when I became a Christian, I placed my nationality and citizenship in heaven.  I am not fully American and I am not fully Kiwi but what I put my hope in, is that day when I will arrive at the immigration gate of heaven and show him my passport stamped with the blood of Jesus and hear those wonderful words, “Welcome home.”   

DC Bible Class

I want to give you a quick glimpse into our Kids Bible Class at Discover Church. We've started working our way through heroes of the Bible and this last week I taught on Moses. We're up to the part of asking Pharoah to let them go and then the ten plagues.

Right now we have 8 kids regularly and 2 returning soon (Rylee and Gavin!) and there is a wide age range between them all (6 years between the oldest and youngest). It all makes for a very interesting bible class situation. Some of our kids have grown up in Bible class and could finish all of the stories for you. Some of our kids are brand new to church and the Bible and you can just see in their eyes the freshness of hearing these stories for the first time.

I found a great song on the ten plagues here, so we started by singing that and going over our memory verse for this term:

"We wait in hope for the LORD; he helps us.

He is like a shield that keeps us safe." Psalm 33:20

The first plague is water into blood. So I poured clean water into a pitcher that had a couple red food coloring drops at the bottom.

Second, we had a tubeful of frogs that we played with and "discussed" what it would be like to have frogs everywhere. I was trying my best to make them understand how gross it really must have been because in a class of mostly boys and one very brave little girl, they thought the frogs sounded pretty cool:

The third and fourth is gnats and flies. Since these are similar we grouped them together and made our very own fly swatters. We scattered around the room, swatting our very own "flies" and singing "shoo fly".

We even had a contest to see who could swat their fly the furthest. The kids really loved this one.

The fifth, animals dying, was kind of fun because we had several little livestock toys that we played with and talked about what the Israelites used their animals for. Then, we watched them all die:

This is me talking about how stinky it would get when the animals were all dying.

After our snack, we made a mini book of the first five plagues. We'll add the last five next week and then send home the completed book.

Hudson coloring the nile river red.

Kason's frog page

I'm hoping soon to put up a video of the kids reciting their memory verse. We've picked verses so far that we've put actions to to help the kids remember. They have done a fantastic job working on their verses and one of our friends has told me that her daughter will recite her verse all day at home and also at her school!