Hope Rains Down

by Alecia Klauk
(Chapin, SC)

Here's the scene:

I am caught up in worship, my heart full and given over. I know that it is the time to give my full attention to my King and just allow my thoughts and emotions to be swept up in Him. I am in that sweet place of His presence. And it was there that I saw it.

In a particularly intimate moment, I felt the flash of a vision in my heart. It was quick. I wanted to see clearly, so I asked for a slow review. Here's what I saw.

There is consuming bright light, yellows and oranges and reds of illuminated light casting a beautiful glow. My Jesus bending down. I can see His hands and His feet. He is reaching to draw a pitcher through water, a fairly large body of water, at His feet. He pulls the full container up, preparing to pour it out. He stretches out His hand and empties the pitcher. The water falls as rain, and like Elijah's widow's oil, it continues to pour long after it should have been empty.

The vision was stark because of where the water was flowing. It rained down upon people, specifically people in incredible need. People with nothing. People who eek out an existence every day and never know how, or if, they will survive.

These beautiful "least of these" received the cool drops with great joy, faces glowing with great smiles, dancing, drinking it in to quench their parched throats, using it to bring hope of some reprieve in their desolation. They were covered in light and wet with the reception of a source of comfort and satisfaction of need. It was beautiful. But it gets even better.

I knew from the moment I watched Jesus bend down that the body of water was not actually water at all. It looked like water, acted like water, but it was not water.

It was tears. My tears. A lifetime of tears.

"You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle." Psalm 56:8

Maybe I needed a pond instead of a bottle. I'm not sure. I just know that in my mind's eye, I saw what was God's collection of my tears, and He was using them to pour blessing onto people that He loves, those He has taught me to love, those I need to love ever more.

There was such an overwhelming beauty in that vision. Beauty in the miracle that God can take tragedy and turn it into triumph.

In the midst of seeing that vision, I felt His voice in my spirit reminding me that every pain, every loss, every tragedy of my life has a purpose and a goal.

I have been learning for some time that everything that touches me is for an ultimate good that will eventually be revealed. What the vision showed me in a new way is that the ultimate good He wants to impart is for me, but not just for me.

And I think as I watched the rain, the rain of my tears, I knew it. I knew it all would be revealed. There will be a day when it will all make sense, and I wonder: if I looked closer, maybe I'd see more of it everyday. More of the miracle of that transformation. More of the glory.

I have pictures of it now. I want to be more keen in my quest to see more. All of us who love Him are pictures of that transforming grace.

You have your own story, but here's some pieces of mine:

The child with extra challenges becomes a source of incredible strength, not just for her but for me.

The babies lost become joy found, again, not just for them or even just me, but the world around.

Old wounds become surrendered scars of faithfulness, and the deepest pain becomes the greatest compassion.

A heart that longs to go is told to stay but given countless opportunities to touch farther and broader than would ever be possible otherwise.

Every remotely derogatory event of my life will now or someday funnel into the great pitcher of God's bounty and be poured out as an offering on the world. I want it to bless, to provide, to relieve. He alone can do just that.

The pain always has a purpose. The tears have a path that flows into rivers of living water.

God always wants to use our pain to ultimately bring Him glory. To make Him visible.

Receive deeply these verses of my favorite hymn:

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

"Trace the rainbow through the rain."

That's it. My vision was washed in light -- and when there is rain swimming in light, there is always a rainbow. The symbol of the faithfulness of God.

In the glory of His presence, our pain is transformed.

In a triumphant reach of His hand, that metamorphasized pain stretches to the rest of the world in victorious splendor, and there our most abundant showers of tears become healing rain to the rest of the world.

There is no greater hope that that.