“Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. 
As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, 
like the spring rains that water the earth.”

Hosea 6:3

The heat feels oppressive. Like a heavy weight pushing (you) down into the dry and cracked ground. You feel your body crying out for relief, from the very depths of yourself you want the heat to break-the dryness to be gone. Life is slow and sluggish. Rest is non-existent as the air sits still and hot around you.

Then you hear murmurings. The people are whispering: “It’s coming.” You turn your face toward the sky and scrutinize every sign, every movement of the wind and dark patch of cloud. You wait. As the horizon darkens you pray that it hits you, that the wind doesn’t change its direction. You hear the growling thunder and allow yourself to hope.

Those first few drops feel like a promise. Like maybe everything is about to change. In a moment dry roads become rivers. Instantly creation seems to have woken up. The day holds a sense of growth; life comes forth from what looked hopeless and dead.

Rainy season in Zambia holds a special place for me, green bursting forth from brown dust fills my heart with hope and longing for something new in my own life. These past few months have been particularly hard for me. I have been dealing with grief; and getting lost in my emotions has made me relate to “hot season” here in a way I haven’t before.

It felt like Africa was holding up a mirror into my soul and all I could see was longing; longing for relief from the unrelenting hardness of life. Longing for a salve for the cracks that seemed to separate my foundation.

In the still, heaviness of the depths of night something whispered to me, “He’s coming”. And so I waited, I hoped, and I watched for His movement. As I watched the earth around me yearning for the rains, I fought to hold onto Hosea 6: “He will appear; He will come to me.”

And in an instant He showered my soul with goodness. He changed the hard roads in my heart to rivers of uncontrolled joy. Glimpses of new life came forth from the dust.

Rainy season in Zambia isn’t the rainforest. It isn’t 24/7 rain. There are still days where we wrestle with the heat. In some ways the days between rains seem harder than the months before, the desire for a storm more intense once you’ve stood in it’s power. But we live in these days with confidence, knowing that at any moment the sky will open and reward us.

These days I live with a knowing that as hard as my days feel- He will come to me. As surely as each long night has ended, His goodness will greet me each and every time I rise.