Recently, the Southeastern States suffered a severe drought. Swampy Florida, where I live, has been resculptured by developers into gazillions of retention ponds so that houses and stores and roads don't get sucked into muck. It's environmentally protective while making room for the one thousand people who move into the state per day.
These man-made ponds also make beautiful scenery for backyards and parks and church properties. During the drought, the water level shrunk lower and lower and lower. We could finally figure out how deep the ponds are, for eventually we saw birds wading in them. If the drought had continued much longer, we would have seen them completely empty. Indeed, some ponds did dry up.
While this was happening, I noticed something interesting. The grass that surrounded the ponds had become brown for lack of nourishment, but the dirt walls of the pond, which were normally under water, sprouted with lush, green vegetation.
When the ponds are full, nothing grows there, but during a drought's drain on the ponds, new growth spurts up. So too with our spiritual lives. When we feel dry, when God seems far away, when we endure problems that drain us, our personal droughts produce new growth that never would have occurred otherwise. Let us praise God for the hard times as well as the good times!
