Green Drought

Australia is a land of contradictions and unpredictabilities.

A popular poem memorized by Australian school children contains the verse, "I love a sunburned country, a land of sweeping plains; of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains."

The land I come from is a little more predictable. When I left in January 2007, it was a frostbit country, a land of weeping plains, of snow-capped volcano ranges, of cold and drippy rains. About 23 hours later, I was embraced in Melbourne, Australia by the hottest, most humid summer in decades.

Since then I have watched seasons come and go for a little more than a year. This summer was fairly mild and seems to be ending soon. Temps have hovered in the 90s-100s for a few days, then drops to mid-70s or less with mornings in the low 40s for the rest of the week. One day the temperature dropped from 85 to 68 in two hours with the onset of a summer rainstorm.

Other things are contradictory to this northern hemisphere native. It snows in July. Tulips and daffodils are autumn flowers for Easter, and that holiday is the last great getaway weekend for camping in the fall. Christmas is a time for barbecues on any beach, and prime Christmas gifts are surfboards and beach towels. Australia Day on January 26 every year is the equivalent of a firecracker hot American Fourth of July. The water flows down drains backward, and night-time constellations are mostly unfamiliar.

One odd contradiction that sticks with me is the term I've heard here: "green drought." When winter started last June, Steve and I chatted with a sheep rancher's daughter about all the rain we'd had and how green everything was. She said not to let looks fool me. Even though most of their 600 acres was lush with greening pastures, the earth was bone dry about an inch underneath. I was baffled. News reporters regaled the best start to the ski season in decades, dams were filling, rivers were flooding, native plants that had adjusted to years of little water budded and bloomed. But a careful look at dust puffing out from underneath the tires of a truck moving across a green paddock proved the rancher's daughter right--the soil is very dry underneath all that green.



That made me ponder. People are so often like this green drought. We may look happy and peaceful and prosperous and fertile. But inside we are dry, empty, insecure and lonely. A closer look, or hard times, may prove a bone-dry soul. I know my life was like that, and still is in some areas. Before this big life-change I struggled to thrive in a life too busy and too empty.

I also know from experience as a Bible study leader and regular church attender that sanctuaries are full of souls experiencing their own green drought. We put on our happy, going-to-church faces so that no one looks under the surface and sees the parched soul inside. We have become like "clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted--twice dead." Jude 12b




With any drought, it takes time for the land to recover with regular watering; to drink in enough water to sustain healthy plant life, not just giving the illusion of fertility. But as this process takes place, there are not so many puffs of dust as the soul takes root in Christ and a new life begins.

Changes aren't easy, especially in a land of contradictions and unpredictabilities. But we can thrive by drinking in scriptures, meditating on the Word, following in the safe footsteps of Jesus who has gone ahead to make a place for us to join Him.

It is with joy, and hints of green in our spirit, that we can proclaim with the prophet Jeremiah, "blessed is the (wo)man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. (S)he will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it's leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." Jeremiah 17:7-8




Living in a land of unpredictability but thriving in the water of the Word,

Heidi