Where Does Rain Come From?
My duties as quality engineer for United Technologies included visiting automobile assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois for new product launches and problem solving activities when things went wrong. Dorothy and I had been married for seven years when I went to work at the Holland facility, and partly because we had three kids and Dorothy stayed home instead of holding a job, money was very tight. Regarding vacation time, we fit day trips into our weekends whenever we could, not being able to finance a whole week off at a time. So, whenever the company sent me to an assembly plant, I requested the company car, which happened to be a white Ford Taurus station wagon. I tried my best to get my meetings scheduled on a Friday or a Monday. On such occasions, I called Dorothy as soon as I knew about the assembly plant issue, and she prepared the kids. The fact that single business travelers in America sleep in rooms with two double beds meant that there was always enough for my family of five, three kids under the age of seven snuggled in one bed, Dorothy and I snuggled into the other. They usually played around the pool while I was at the plants, and sometimes we were able to see a couple of sights on the weekend itself. I don’t recall that there was anything to see around Janesville, Wisconsin, but we once saw the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. When the meetings were in Detroit, my wife’s hometown, we stayed with mom or Dorothy’s sister.
The key to making the best of a couple of weekend days is to get to the destination as expeditiously as possible. I came to understand my father’s strategy for vacationing on these trips. As negative as driving long stretches in a car can be, the alternative was never going anywhere. The kids typically zonked out in their car seats, and Dorothy likewise spent many of these hours asleep in the passenger seat. Amanda was often the last to succumb to the sandman. Instead, she talked. And talked. Of my three kids, she was always the most gregarious, partly because she’d had the most practice. Amanda was able to speak whole sentences before she could walk or had teeth. Back a few years, in the church nursery, the women used to gather around Amanda in the baby department to hear her say things like, “Grandma took me to McDonald’s, we got French fries.”
On one of our earlier trips, when Amanda was about five, we were the last ones in the car awake, and she asked me, “Daddy, where does rain come from?” As a fan of Bill Cosby, I had heard of these kinds of parent-child conversations in which the adult is worn to a frazzle by the incessant “why?” of an inquisitive child. I thought about the question for a moment, and recalled my mother’s scorn for baby-talk and silly answers to childrens’ questions. I answered Amanda as best as I could, slowly explaining that rain was one step in a great cycle. Water evaporates from oceans and lakes, and travels many miles in the form of clouds. I told her that warm air holds more water than cold because there is more space between the air molecules because warm air has more energy and is more active. I added something about dust particles, though I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not it could rain without dust. I said that when the barometer falls, it means the air pressure is going down, and with less energy in the sky, molecules would press together and force some water out. I said the air could hold only a limited amount of water. Amanda sat quietly while I was talking. When I was finished, she said nothing. I asked her, “Do you understand?” She said, “Yes, daddy.” I tested her affirmative by asking, “Explain it back to me, then.” Amanda confidently answered, “Well, first the water goes up, and then the water comes down.” What could I say, but “You’re right!”
Out of all the many anecdotes from the childhood of my kids, this one has proved to be one of the most profound. There have since been many church sermons in which the subject of the day in some form is “Why, God?” There have been many times when our friends and family, while relating some negative experience, voices the same questions, “Why, God?” Even in college, we have repeatedly encountered works of literature, that is, poetry, drama, essays, written by great thinkers who eloquently propound a stylized version of the question, “Why, God?” Since my conversation with Amanda, I have not been able to form the question, “Why, God?” At least, if I do, I don’t expect the kind of answer I want, that is, immediate and to my liking. I know I am the child in the car seat. I can think of three choices God has for answering my questions. He can remain silent, he can answer me with a simplified answer which is geared down for a child’s understanding, or he can answer me with complete and accurate details.
In the first case, I don’t personally feel God is ever silent, though he is not obligated to return an answer in the form I demand. One woman told me she had prayed, “God, if you don’t want me to get a divorce, make it thunder.” When no thunder came, she felt justified. Another had prayed, “God if you want me to marry <John> then make the third pearl fall out of my ring again.” The wrong pearl fell out and the girl became more confused. When I was considering marriage to Dorothy, I prayed, “Please tell me that I should marry her or not.” I heard and felt nothing.
In the second case, I think there are very many simple answers to questions we pose for God, maybe too many. I think of how many sermons I have heard, explanations from elders and counselors, not to mention opinions of fellow Christians about issues in our lives. I have grown weary of sentences that begin, “Oh, now I know why God…” I have no problem accepting that someone has discovered a facet of God’s reasons for events in their lives, but I am no longer comfortable with wrapping God up in a portable package. When we had been married only a couple of years, Dorothy and I supposed that God wanted me in the machine shop to be a witness to the factory workers, that I should be content with my assignment. The result was that it became difficult to leave BMC when we had opportunity for professional advancement. Not only that, it was one of the chief reasons I did not finish my degree earlier. When we weighed out living in Pennsylvania with Center Manufacturing, we foolishly reasoned, “Maybe God is sending us there to learn German, so we will speak it when we finally get to Germany.” Fact is, only one person we met spoke German in Williamsport, and his dialect would not have been very recognizable in Munich.
Finally, after over forty-five years of church, I have begun to think that God has provided complete and accurate answers for all our questions. The problem, though, is not with the one giving the answers, but with the one receiving them. Consider a common question such as, “Why did God allow my father to die early?” God does not give a simple answer because the answer is not simple. In order to understand the reason for death, a person must first understand the nature of death, and also of life. A person must be able to work with the reasons why God created mankind in the first place, and the nature of mankind’s role on the earth, as a culture as well as individuals. There can be no complete answer until a person can explain the nature of sin, and whether or not it had anything to do with the death. For that, the person must know the forms, origins, and characteristics of good and evil, both as theoretical concepts as well as actual manifestations in ordinary lives. For all of these concepts, and more, a person will spend his lifetime considering the evidence.
There is no simple sentence that will make everyone feel good, yet I feel peace in the realization that the answers are laid out at my feet, though they extend in their complexities beyond the horizon. I am invited to pursue my answers, to consult those who have gone before, leaving their thoughts in written form. I am invited to pray for direction, that God will lead me to understanding. I am encouraged to listen to what the preachers and scholars have to say. I’m even not above listening to ordinary opinions. It all contains bits and pieces that I realize I am expected to piece together. I like to imagine that, when I leave this world and enter the next, and God asks me what I did with my life, and I tell him what I learned, he will smile with the same smile I wore when Amanda told me where rain comes from.
