We’re getting rain today and there is something about rain that makes it feel like a blessing from heaven, especially in an area like southern California that has been experiencing a severe drought. Right now it’s a light rain, but steady. But every once in a while there is a squall that brings the English phrase “raining cats and dogs” to mind. I looked it up and there are two or three possible origins of the idiom, but the one that seems most plausible is the fact that drowned cats and dogs ended up in the streets and gulleys when there was heavy rain and flooding, so it must have rained cats and dogs.

So we did have some pretty hard rain in the last couple hours, enough to make a big puddle at the bottom of the hill behind my house. Though there were no cats or dogs there, it did seem like they were falling out of the sky a few times. It was hard enough to delay some services in town, close down the main road out of town due to flooding, and put me way behind on the Catch. So I have decided to lighten up the Catch today and give precedence to our BlogTalkRadio interview with the enigmatic Lambert Dolphin. We plan to discuss revival and “retirement” which for him at 86 doesn’t exist. You’ll be able to hear that by about 4:15pm Pacific. Believe me, you do not ever want to miss a chance to hear a great thinker and man of faith like Lambert.

Rains are always a sign of blessing especially in an agrarian society that depends on crops in the fields. Biblically there was the former rains in the fall and the latter rains in the spring. Some traditions have the “latter rain” as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days. Who knows whether this is that, but I do call on all of you to pray fervently for the Spirit to visit us in a fresh way and empower us to do His will in what seems to us like the last days. Remember, if God is slow about delivering on His promise to return, it is for the salvation of many more people. And that’s where you and I come in!