I am writing several weeks in advance of the Thirtieth Sunday. Where I live, we’re still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Joaquin plus an unnamed storm and some unusual lunar phenomena that together pushed water back up the rivers and caused near-record high tides and coastal flooding. (This place is more below sea level than New Orleans.) But that’s nothing compared to the hit taken by the Carolinas—thousand-year floods, roads washed away, dams still in danger of bursting, and a severe shortage of drinkable water. They’re not used to that. People think, “Why here? Why not in California, where they need it!”

While the East Coast is drowning in rain, the West Coast is in the middle of a years-long drought, which brings with it thousands of acres of wildfires and, when it does rain, devastating mudslides.

The rain it raineth every day upon the righteous and on the unrighteous (Mt 5:45).

Which makes today’s psalm seem, well, overkill: “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the torrents in the southern desert.” That arid area is the Negev or Negeb, south of Judea, where the riverbeds dry up in summer’s heat, and burst into bloom when the rains return.

That together with the First Reading’s “I will lead them to brooks of water on a level road, so that none shall stumble,” might lead one to include “Rain Down” by Jaime Cortez or Dan Schutte’s “Glory and Praise to Our God,” especially the fourth verse: “God has watered our barren land and spent his merciful rain. Now the rivers of life run full for anyone to drink.”

M.D. Ridge