In the midst of a crazy week full of phone calls and email from school about homework and eye-rolling and too-much-talking, I got a letter from our little Compassion man Adamu in Africa. He launches into his letter beginning with school and his mom, as always, but within a sentence or two, he gets real, “We have no rain, Sister. The crops dying. Please…we need rain. Pray for the rain.”

Something snaps in me. I can send him money for food and school supplies, but the money can’t buy rain.  I can send him letters and pictures and words of encouragement, but I cannot send him rain.

In a twist of bitter irony, the rainy season began this week in Okinawa. I don’t mind the rain, and I love an Arizona summer monsoon, but I dread the day-in-day-out rain that leaves everything in a constant state of mud and damp—I’m bracing myself against the rain. Meanwhile, Adamu’s family desperately needs the rain.

It simply isn’t fair. I sit in abundance, cursing the rain. Is Adamu angry? Does he curse the sky? I pray for his family to keep faith, for his heart to stay soft.

I walk the tight wire of life believing I have a thick, cushy safety net several layers deep. We buy our life insurance, we pay off debt, we stack and save and prepare for the rainy days of retirement. We repeat pithy sayings about taking risks and living to the fullest, but it is all a hollow, false illusion. Jesus didn’t tell me to build a life. He said to pour OUT my life. All the while, Adamu has no water today.

Will you pray with me for water? Adamu and I, we both need Water– and faith while we wait for it to fall.