The village of Lubin sits still within the Artibonite Valley. A cornmeal coloured savannah sprawls out until its fingertips reach patches of shrubbery and tiny inlets. Then in the distance, the landscape escalates into rigid, elevated, mountainous, breath-taking terrain. When you are yanked out of the speed of city life, you notice tiny things. You see God’s breath, His signature engraved on His creation.

The dust is painfully dry, yet the children play in it and the adults trod through it daily. This leaves splays of faded fold on their bare legs. You can taste the absence of moisture at the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat. Electrical fans are a thing of another dimension. Sweat sticks to you closer than any brother can. At times, our lives go through periods of dryness like this. You sit waiting for everything to die and for your thirst to overwhelm you. It is then most of all that He expects us to seek Him and find Him.

Psalm 42 expresses that when our souls are cast down and disquieted within us, we must hope then in Him. Verse 11 continues “yet shall I praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.” When the parameters appear to be far out of our grasp, we have an oasis with us for refreshing. When we make God our dwelling place, we learn to progress beyond the boundaries of our physical dwelling place. He hides us under the shadow of His wings from the severe heat of our trying situation. No matter how arid the ground may appear to be, the land will not be cursed with barrenness. In spite of the humid air, you shall not die. In the middle of famine God fed Elijah, in the midst of a flood God provided evidence of land for Noah. Impossible is not a word existent in God’s vocabulary because He dismantles its meaning every time. To look through the lens of Jehovah, is to see reality with His eyes. It is to trade ashes in to receive beauty, it is to obtain joy in place of sadness, it is to exchange mourning for dancing. It is to swallow sickness with expectancy for healing. It is to count it joy to share in His suffering.

Although the zenith of nature’s wrath appears to be expressed through heat, children still come out to the church to sit in their numbers and learn about Jesus, to learn crafts, to eat and to know that they are special. Similarly, God expects us to be like David in Psalm 63. Again, it is when we earnestly seek Him that we are able to find our Beloved. Has He not asked us to seek and we will find? To knock and the door will be opened? Searching long and hard creates one thing that a comfort zone will not: Resilience. It is when the eaglet has been expelled from the nest that he will learn, not only to fly, but to soar, to scale the air. It may take days, it may be months, but we must endure unto the end. Sometimes, when you have locked your concentration fully on Him, and withdrawn your focus from the struggle and the process, it is then that we find Him. It is then that there is an abundance of rain.