The driveway daffodils are in full bloom, and the magnolias are almost finished flowering. Monday’s cold front crept into town without warning and stole the sun for a week, leaving us to embrace the unrelenting overcast and interspersed cloudbursts.

Ye olde joke comes to mind: “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?“

I never used to understand why anyone would choose spring as their favorite season. Growing up in a temperate rainforest crowded with evergreens, for me, spring was just extra rain and more mud, as though someone had decided a soggy extension of winter would be an excellent addition to the calendar. We didn’t just have April showers; we also had October showers…and November showers, and February torrential downpours, and March deluges.

Yet, for the most part, the postman and his motto had nothing on us. Fishing, camping, hiking, and even soccer tournaments were not despised due to a little precipitation. If there was rain and wind, that might change the game, depending on the activity—there’s a difference between undesirable weather and inclement weather. But, for the most part, the strong likelihood of rainfall was always included in both our preparations and expectations for outdoor activities. As Calvin’s dad would say in Calvin and Hobbes, “It builds character.”

In light of all this, the small remembering I’m about to tell you strikes me as unremarkably remarkable––one of those unassuming pieces of life that is so very small, you never notice it’s just a little bit special until after some years have come and gone.

As I sat at my desk yesterday and watched water rivulets collect themselves, careen down the shingles, and scurry into the gutter, a faded memory came to mind…my youngest brother, probably 4 or 5 years old at the time, lifting up these simple words when we were all cozied up in the living room for evening prayers:

And thank You for the rain that waters the earth.

It never hit me until I was an adult that this phrase has permeated our prayers since we were children, even though the four of us siblings grew up in what is arguably one of the rainiest places in the U.S. A far cry from any desert, dustbowl, or dramatic movie scene of scattered raindrops pelting down from a darkened sky onto thirsty farmland after years of drought, we lived in a small town plunked into the heart of a rainforest that receives, on average, 150 inches of rain annually.

All this to say, we didn’t need any more rain. We didn’t ask for it. And yet.

Thank You for the rain that waters the earth.

I would guess that we imitated this phrase from our parents, and it makes me grateful that they acknowledged God’s sovereignty over the big things and the small things – even down to the weather patterns. By way of this little thanksgiving that humbly ingrained itself in our prayers, our parents passed down their trust in the Lord’s perfect timing.

The compassion in His plans is far beyond our finite grasp. His storehouses are never empty, and it is entirely up to Him where and how He chooses to act in abundance. Because the world is His, and so are we.

I’m not sure if our parents recognized it at the time any more than we did, but these few words were growing something in us, and little by little shaping our hearts:

Thank You for the rain that waters the earth.

They may as well have prayed, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.”