Provision: How Precious Did That Grace Appear

By Anne Jackson

Published: September 08, 2009

I don't think it's a coincidence that God created rain in such a fashion that it mimics the human tear.

Have you ever had that moment when there's nothing left inside of you, not even a tear to shed, and at the same moment you see a drop of rain cascade down the window of your house or across the windshield of your car as you drive and you feel somehow divinely touched?

This year, I've spent more time on airplanes and away from home than my previous twenty-eight years combined. And while I do wholeheartedly enjoy a life of travel, of meeting new people and hearing new stories, the amount of time I spend alone and inside my own head can get the best of me at my weakest moments.

Recently, after a week away from home and an overnight flight schedule with little time for sleep, I hit that wall. The wall where the last bit of your spirit slips right through your fingers and the only thing you have left are your doubts and insecurities and the dark weights of your past - the things which are so heavy it seems like they'll never leave you.

Taking my usual back row window seat, I rested my head against the thin plastic wall of the inside of the plane. A recent rain shower coated the plane in an army of tiny drops of water. Water, that, when we began taking off, gently rolled across the window in a pattern so parallel to the tears I wanted to cry, I could almost feel the cold, wet trails they would have left behind on my cheek if they had been my own.

Yet they weren't. And as those drops rolled across the window, I no longer felt the need to cry.

How precious did that grace appear.

Provision.

It's something we're literally - and sometimes figuratively - graced with, when we are, well...without.

Anne Jackson is an author, speaker, and transformational activist who lives in the Nashville area with her husband, Chris. Her highly-anticipated book, Mad Church Disease - Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic (Zondervan) released in February 2009. Her next book, Permission to Speak Freely (Zondervan), is due to be out in Fall 2010. She is a contributor to various Christianity Today blogs and Deadly Viper Character Assassins. You can find Anne blogging at http://flowerdust.net.