“I’m awfully glad it’s raining
‘Cause no one sees your teardrops when it pours,
And no one knows the thunder is your heartbreak in disguise.
They think the rainy night’s what put that sad look in your eyes.”
Those are the words sung by Jim Varney, as he played the character Earnest in a slapstick 1980s movie. That song provided a sober moment in the midst of ninety minutes of slapstick humor, and it echoes an often repeated experience—rain and despair make a fitting pair. There is something about suffering and despair and tears that finds a friend in the rhythmic drops of rain. Rain makes it seem like the whole world is joining you in your sadness.
As fitting a pair as rain and despair is, it is actually rain that Eliphaz points his friend Job to consider to strengthen his faith in the middle of his suffering. Eliphaz doesn’t encourage Job to find solace by staring out at the rain to help in wallow in his misery, but as a tool to focus back on God’s greatness. By the time Eliphaz offers his wisdom to Job, Job’s wealth has bottomed out through natural disasters and international raiding. He has already been crushed by the grief of ten funerals because of the death of all his children. And he is now in an antiquated hospice care as his own life is hanging in the balance as he battles some mysterious, painful disease. Job is well beyond finding solace in a weighted blanket and watching raindrops chase each other down window panes. Job’s life has shattered.
Admittedly, Eliphaz’s advice to Job is a mixture of truth and unfair assumptions, but Eliphaz does offer Job some helpful advice in Job 5. He says that if he were in Job’s situation, he would “seek God, and to God would I commit my cause, who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number” (Job 5:8-9), and then the very first thing he calls Job to consider to illustrate how God does great and marvelous things is rain—“He gives rain on the earth and sends water on the fields” (Job 5:10).
In the midst of our despair and even when it continues into depression, Eliphaz’s advice is needed. We need to be strengthened by trusting our great God. We need to remember that God does great things that we can’t comprehend. We need to look at our suffering through the truth that God is great. We need to consider the rain.
Our study of science gives us far more understanding about precipitation patterns than Eliphaz had. At some point in elementary school, I learned about evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Eliphaz, though, places rain into the great, unsearchable, and marvelous acts of God category. And why wouldn’t he? Even with our great technological advances, it is a massive endeavor to build the systems needed to move critical water even a few miles to reach a farm. If we are working against gravity, we would need a combination of pipes and pumps, and depending on where the water is coming from, we may even need a desalination plant. God’s process removes all the pipes, pumps, and plants. God taps into a handful of creations He holds the patent on, like the sun, wind, and gravity—to cause liquid water to evaporate into vapor and stay suspended in the atmosphere for days and travel hundreds of miles before it condenses back into liquid and it falls back to earth to water some dry field. Eliphaz is ignorant of God’s invisible irrigation system, so when Eliphaz wants his friend Job to be strengthened in his despair by seeing how great God is, rain comes to his mind. I picture farmer Eliphaz watching in wonder as rain again falls from the seemingly endless invisible reservoir in the sky, and thinking, “I don’t know how God does it.”
Rain is just one example of the great and unsearchable and marvelous works of God. Eliphaz could have said, “Consider the stars, the wind, the dirt, the waves, the flowers, or the sun,” and each of those journeys of meditation would cause us to see that God is great and unsearchable and has a resume overflowing with marvelous works. And in seeing how great God is and how unsearchable and marvelous His works are, our faith in God would be strengthened as we look back at the struggles and brokenness of life. Seeing the greatness of God doesn’t remove the struggle or pain, but it can shower us with comfort and joy because of who our God is.
So to those who are in despair, I encourage you, like Eliphaz—look at the rain. Look at the rain, not to wallow in despair. Look to the rain to remember how great and marvelous God is. God, who can move molecules around invisibly in the sky to cause rain to fall and sustain little bits of grass in places on this earth where no human being walks, is a God who can be trusted no matter what is causing our despair.
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