Hath the rain a father?
The weather provider
Two ships meet mid-Atlantic. The one is going to Southampton and the other is coming to New York. Provide weather that, while it is abaft for one ship, it is not a head wind for the other. There is a farm that is dried up for the lack of rain, and here is a pleasure party going out for a field excursion. Provide weather that will suit the dry farm and the pleasure excursion. No, sirs, I will not take one dollar of stock in your weather company. There is only one Being in the universe who knows enough to provide the right kind of weather for this world. “Hath the rain a father?” (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
Who hath begotten the drops of dew?--
Dewdrops
Dew is moisture dropped from the atmosphere upon the earth. During the daytime the earth both receives and returns heat; but after sunset it no longer receives, and yet it continues for a time to throw off the heat it has received. In a little while the grass, flowers, and foliage are quite cool; yet the atmosphere still retains the heat of the day, which, as the evening grows cooler, it gradually deposits on the earth beneath. This deposit is dew. How wise and wonderful are the ways of God! The effects of dew are like the influence we exert over one another.
1. Dew is powerful. There are some countries, or parts of them, whose vegetation almost entirely depends on the dew. Ahab was heavily punished when told that for three years there should be no rain, and the punishment was greatly increased by the withdrawal of the dew as well. Similarly the power we exert over one another is very great.
2. The dew is perfectly silent. So is influence. You cannot hear the sun rise, the snow fall, or the corn grow. The greatest powers in nature are silent. Our influence, be it sweet or sour, is slipping out from us every hour, and we are all making the world a better or a worse place for living in every day.
3. The dew is very precious. When Isaac gave his dying blessing to his boys, he prayed, “God give thee of the dew of heaven.” Even so influence, good influence, is very precious. I believe more good is wrought by quiet influence than by all the talking.
4. Last of all, let us remember, the dew soon passes away. Hoses complains that the “goodness of Israel goeth away as the early dew.” That is to say, the dew is quickly dried up unless absorbed by the flowers and grass, just as influence is soon forgotten unless obeyed. (J. C. Adlard.)
And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath tendered it?--In the 38th chapter of that inspired drama the Book of Job, God says to the inspired dramatist, with ecstatic interrogation, “The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?” God there asks Job if he knows the parentage of the frost. He inquires about its pedigree. He suggests that Job study up the frost’s genealogical line. A minute before God had asked about the parentage of a raindrop in words that years ago gave me a suggestive text for a sermon: “Hath the rain a father?” But now the Lord Almighty is catechising Job about the frost. He practically says, “Do you know its father? Do you know its mother In what cradle of the leaves did the wind reek it? ‘The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?’“ He is a stupid Christian who thinks so much of the printed and bound Bible that he neglects the Old Testament of the fields, nor reads the wisdom and kindness and beauty of God written in blossoms on the orchard, in sparkles on the lake, in stars on the sky, in frost on the meadows. (T. De Witt Talmage.)