Rain.  Sometimes we welcome it; sometimes we do not.  As I write these words, too many people have more rain than they want or need, and even more people have too little, far less than what they want or need.  It's a mystery, really, the rain.  Though we can understand the science behind it, we often find it difficult, if we are spiritually inclined, to balance the fact of rain with the sovereignty of God.  Why does rain fall on some rather than others?  And why, as Jesus remarked in Matthew's gospel, does God send rain on the just as well as the unjust?
     In some ways, these are unanswerable questions.  In other ways, they are not.  If there is a creator, a personal and loving creator, however bewildering he and his actions may be, we at least have a path to follow.  Science is grand, indeed, but science cannot explain why, the point and purpose in human affairs.  It can only tell us how things happen, which of course all of us enjoy knowing.  Beyond this, however, as biologist William Provine once remarked, we are no more than a plop, here today, gone tomorrow. What's the point?
     Trying to construct a "theology" of rain, however, is difficult.  How do we know?  Yet we do know that we cannot live with purpose or point.  We also know that finding these things in a pointless universe is clearly impossible.  This is why we must say that the next time we see the rain, whether we find it lovely or horrific, we also know that it's not happening in an empty cosmos.  It's not falling on a bunch of plops. How can we insist otherwise?  
     However, it is falling, the rain is falling on creatures created and loved by God.