Just Like Rain

9 years ago, my wife and I discovered that we would be having twins. Looking ahead to the arrival of two newborns was both exciting and daunting. I remember how many people would respond when we told them the news. Most people would get this weird apprehensive look on their face and ask, “Are you sure you can handle that?”. Another reaction that I recall to be all too common was this, “Oh dear. Double the trouble.”
My oldest three children have been away for the past week. For the first few days, our twins spent some time with a friend of theirs in St. Jacob’s. They spent the remainder of the week with their grandma and grandpa in Cambridge. Last night my twins spent the evening at a birthday party for another friend of theirs. At the moment, my daughter is away at a birthday party with her own friend. When she gets back this evening, it will be the first night that we have had together as a family in well over a week.
Apparently, for many parents, having children is some kind of burden. If having twins is likened to ‘double trouble’, I’m assuming that having one child is trouble on its own. The conclusion that I have come to is this;
“Children are a gift from The Lord;
They area a reward from Him.” Psalm 127:3

It isn’t that having children is in itself the be all end all of living a happy life. If we are placing parenthood in that position of being the ultimate good, we’ve missed the mark. Being a mom or a dad comes with its responsibilities and there are no guarantees that our children will even want to associate themselves with us when they become grown men and women.
I’m so thankful that I have been able to realize the gift that they are as well as the source of the gift. I hope this isn’t a shocker, but Christians aren’t the only people who actually like their kids. Not everyone considers childrearing to be some tiresome task. I am privileged to know many non-believers who delight in the precious gift afforded to them, even though they don’t acknowledge them to be a gift from God. I’m so thankful for all moms and dads who take their parenting role seriously.
As soon as we throw God into the mix, it muddies things up. Doesn’t it? I mean, there are people who love the Lord, who seek after Him but are not able to have children of their own. On the flip side, there are others who want absolutely nothing to do with God, but receive this blessed gift. There are even people who really don’t want children at all, even to the point where they kill the kid before he or she is born. Yet for some reason, God allows that child to be conceived.
Perhaps, kids are like rain. At work, most of the time the guys check out the weather forecast to see what it is supposed to be like for the weekend. For most of my peers, when the weatherman says that it is going to rain on the weekend, they tend to be disappointed. Rain seems to ruin a lot of the ‘fun’ things that we would plan to do outside in the summer time.
As for me, I’ve spent most of my life praying for rain. I grew up on a tobacco farm that did not have an irrigation system. In my mind, it seemed that almost every summer, we lived in fear of drought killing our crop. Rain was the consistent topic of conversation between my parents and their fellow farmers. We looked to the weather man for hope, but he seemed to be wrong so most of the time and so many times it would seem that it would rain not far off, but miss the thirsty crops in our own fields. Having a small farm of my own, I still spend quite a bit of time praying for rain and am rarely disappointed when it does, even if it seems to interfere with some of my leisurely activities.
It is one of the more perplexing truths about God,
“For He gives His sunlight to both the evil and the good, and He sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.” Matthew 5:45
If we really understand what it means to be good, it’s not that Jesus would label any of us with that particular tag. Only God is truly good. Rather, some people seem better than others, or good in our eyes. It seems unfair in a way for God to send sunshine so that we can spend our weekend in a drunken stupor, but deny the dusty fields of someone who depends on a crop for his own livelihood. From our human perspective, there seems to be something unjust about the whole situation.
But what would life be like if He only did nice things for those who deserve it? How many of you would have lived long enough to be able to even come to know Him?
As for me, if you were to delve deeply into the recesses of my mind, you would soon discover that I am not particularly good or just, but I am glad for the rain and I’m thankful for the children that He has placed in my life. I’m going to go and enjoy them now.