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by Precarious Yates
Narrated by Artificial Intelligence – Michelle.
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Isaiah 41:17-20
“The poor and needy search for water,
but there is none;
their tongues are parched with thirst.
But I the Lord will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will make rivers flow on barren heights,
and springs within the valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
and the parched ground into springs.
I will put in the desert
the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.
I will set junipers in the wasteland,
the fir and the cypress together,
so that people may see and know,
may consider and understand,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
that the Holy One of Israel has created it.
In the summer of 2024, our farm endured an awful drought. The government called it an exceptional drought, a step past extreme. Hay crops failed. Our grass didn’t grow. Neighboring farmers had to haul water. We had restrictions on our water: only what was necessary to fill troughs.
For a solid week, we seemed to lose one of our sheep every day, sometimes two a day. In the spring of that year, fifteen lambs had been born on our farm. By late August, we had two. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to keep our livestock alive.
My heart had all but shattered by September. I will never forget holding my bottle-fed lamb as he died in my arms. Nothing I had done for him had worked to keep him alive. I felt defeated. Surrounded by death. It was September, and only one of our spring lambs had survived. One out of fifteen.
But God is the author of life and the giver of hope!
As I sat there in my pasture weeping, my husband tapped my shoulder. “Look!” He pointed to the lower pasture, down the hill, where our cattle grazed.
We had started in 2023 with one cow, a five-month-old black Angus, Jane, who we had bottle-fed. She was only 18 months by that point. Then we got a red heifer, Izzie, that was half Angus and half Scottish Highland, a black dairy cow named Ryleigh, and two full-blooded Scottish Highlands, one female, Scarlet, and one male, Wallace. We’d had five head of cattle.
I looked toward them, exhausted in my grief, grasping for hope. My eyes grew wide. “A calf?!”
There in the middle of the pasture stood our sixth head of cattle, a newborn calf! This was the first calf born on our farm.
Yes, there had been death, and yes, it seemed relentless, but there was LIFE too!
Sometimes our lives feel like a desert. No water. No sign of life. But God is the One who makes streams flow in the desert.
When the women and the disciples beheld Jesus crucified, they beheld the death of hope, their hopes that the Messiah would bring deliverance from their enemies. Their hopes dried up. They left the tomb and went to observe the Sabbath. I bet they felt like a wilderness, like a desert. Like no life could come from them now that their hope had died. They saw the scars. They beheld the lifeless body.
But God! God, who brings water from a rock in the wilderness and causes streams to flow in the desert, God, who called light into being, He raised Christ Jesus from the dead. The crucified Messiah rose to become our Living Hope. And the same Spirit who raised Christ Jesus from the dead also gives life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), and through us to others.
The God who raised Christ Jesus still causes streams to flow in the desert.
On September 20, 2024, rain fell on our farm for the first time since early July. It would take much more rain to restore the land—nine days of saturating rain—but it had begun. When you have cried out with your whole being for the mercy of rain, it hits different when it starts to fall. And when the deserts of our lives turn into fruitful gardens, gratitude gushes that cannot be stopped.
May you, my dear reader, encounter the rains of God’s mercy that turn your desert, whatever it may look like, into a garden!
God bless you!
Now, a word for our sponsor –
The Captives (The Heart of the Caveat Whale Book 1)
The captives will only be free when Shunda loses his fears about who he is. Yet what Shunda fears more than anything is loneliness.
Qoshonni figures she has become too violent and will never come back from the brink that the MerKing has pushed her to.
Mookori knows his father loves him best, but this has no consolation as war invades the shores of his father’s kingdom.
The Heart of the Caveat Whale is an epic trilogy that takes place both under water and on land. Book 1, The Captives, in the beginning of a journey into joy and terror. Sea monsters abound, as does the valor of both simple folk and nobles alike.
About the Author:
Precarious Yates has lived in 8 different states of the Union and 3 different countries, but currently lives in Texas with her husband, her daughter and their big dogs. When she’s not writing, she enjoys music, teaching, playing on jungle gyms, praying and reading. She holds a Masters in the art of making tea and coffee and a PhD in Slinky® disentangling.
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