Thoughts On Rain

by Julie Ackerman

Our Daily Bread is hosted by Les Lamborn

READ: Matthew 5:38-48

He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. —Matthew 5:45

When torrential downpours beat on the heads of my newly planted petunias, I felt bad for them. I wanted to bring them inside to shelter them from the storm. By the time the rain stopped, their little faces were bowed to the ground from the weight of the water. They looked sad and weak. Within a few hours, however, they perked up and turned their heads skyward. By the next day, they were standing straight and strong.

Serving God in a Dry Season

J. LEE GRADY

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(© Jasenka | Stock Free Images )

While Hurricane Sandy’s floods dominated recent weather headlines, a very different weather pattern has cost us more than the superstorm’s $50 billion in damages. The United States actually needs rain—and lots of it. 

Forecasters say our nation is experiencing its worst drought since 1954. As of this week, 60.1 percent of the nation is in drought, with six states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado and Iowa—entirely in drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Lakes are drying up, crops are dying and ranchers are scrambling to feed their cows. 

Some people figure this prolonged dry spell is just the result of cyclical climate patterns. Maybe so, but the Bible suggests that droughts and famines can be linked to spiritual realities. Sometimes the natural world reflects our spiritual condition. Man’s pride, greed, injustice and idolatry can actually disturb nature.

NO WORRIES IN A YEAR OF DROUGHT

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream…It has no worries in a year of drought…” Jeremiah 17:7-8c

Trees were not plentiful in Israel and most grew by sources of water like an oasis or a stream. Jeremiah’s simile indicates a person with confidence in the Lord is like a deep-rooted tree by the stream which has nothing to worry about even when a whole year goes by with no rain.

A young Christian boy in Iraq shares this insight after the bombing of his church in late 2010:

Signs of The Times

Written by Rev. Daniel Forster

Do you know how to share your faith? Take the 35 Day Challenge and know for sure.

“Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”  (Jeremiah 17:5-6, ESV)

In our over stimulating world it is very easy to dismiss and put off “signs” as they are identified in the Bible. It is easy to dismiss these things when so many around us mock them, or we see an overzealous TV preacher tying to shove it down our throats. Yet, if we live our lives by what others say, how others act, how others feel, or even by the majority, we are living our lives for man, and not for our God. We need to seek answers to our doubts, troubles, temptations in His living and true word.

Did belief in gods lead to Mayan demise?

Written By Charles Choi

LiveScience

Temple in the Kingdom of Tikal, one of the most prominent of the Classic Period. (Science/AAAS)

A dread of malevolent spirits haunting forsaken areas could, along with environmental catastrophes, help to explain why some areas in the ancient Mayan world proved less resilient than others when their civilization disintegrated, researchers suggest.

The ancient Maya once claimed an area about the size of Texas, with cities and fields that occupied what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America, including the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The height of the Mayan civilization, known as the Classic period, extended from approximately A.D. 250 to at least 900.

For unknown reasons, the Classic Mayan civilization then collapsed. The population declined catastrophically to a fraction of its former size, and many of their great cities were left mostly abandoned for the jungle to reclaim.

Scientists have long drawn connections between the decline of the ancient Maya and environmental catastrophes, especially drought. Deforestation linked with farming could also have triggered disaster as for instance, reduced tree cover of the ground would have led to loss of fertile topsoil by erosion, as well as greater evaporation of water by sunlight, exacerbating drought.

However, while some locales remain abandoned for long periods, others recovered more quickly. This patchwork pattern of recovery might argue against environmental catastrophes being the sole determining factor behind the collapse of the Classic Mayan civilization as if they were, one might expect such catastrophes to affect all areas equally.

Moreover, archaeologists have pointed out that ancient Mayan societies may have been vulnerable to collapse by their very nature. They apparently funneled wealth to a small ruling elite topped by hereditary divine kings, who had virtually unlimited power but whose subjects expected generosity as a string of military defeats or seasonal droughts could greatly damage their credibility. The stability of this system was further threatened by polygamy among rulers, spawning numerous lineages that warred against each other, overall generating conditions ripe for collapse.

To learn more about the reasons behind the patchy apocalypse and recovery, scientists focused on social declines seen in the terminal part of the Classic period in the Mayan lowlands, ranging from A.D. 750 to 950. They also looked at downturns from A.D. 100 to 250, the terminal part of the "Pre-Classic" period. [End of the World? Top Apocalypse Fears]

Available data suggested the elevated parts of the Mayan lowlands, which include much of today's Yucatan Peninsula, were significantly more vulnerable to collapse and less likely to recover than lower-lying areas. Sites within this elevated region lacked perennial water sources and were more dependent solely on what rainwater they could capture and store, leaving them vulnerable to shifts in climate. In contrast, neighboring lower-lying areas had access to springs, perennial streams and sinkholes known as cenotes that were often filled with water.

Reoccupying elevated interior areas with large numbers of people would require intense labor to re-establish water management systems, helping to explain why they were left abandoned, the researchers noted. In contrast, dwelling in the neighboring, low-lying areas was less challenging, and evidence suggests that sites there were typically occupied continuously even when the major political and economic networks they were linked with collapsed.

At the same time, the Classic Maya would have implicated gods and their "divine" rulers for the collapse. In that way, their abandoned territories became thought of as chaotic, haunted places, and reclaiming any lands from the forest was at best done with great care and ritual. Survivors in outlying sites may often not have bothered. "Reoccupation called for a reordering of a most profound kind," the researchers write in the March 6 issue of the journal Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences.

"I have little doubt that droughts and environmental degradation as for example, soil erosion or declining soil fertility as played roles in the collapse, defined here as a substantial and prolonged decline in population, of some sites or regions," said researcher Nicholas Dunning, a geographer at the University of Cincinnati. "There is also the important role played by the environmental setting of sites as for example, sites in the elevated interior region were significantly more vulnerable to drought cycles than those in surrounding lower-elevation areas where water was more abundant."

"But the fact that collapse was often a patchwork affair and a prolonged process does indeed strongly suggest that cultural factors as for example, strength of rulership, flexibility of the society and its ability to adapt to change as were equally important for determining whether or not a given site or group of sites adapted or collapsed," Dunning told LiveScience.

Dunning's colleagues included Timothy Beach of Georgetown University and Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach of George Mason University.

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