I admit it.  I have a brown thumb.  But I promise I didn’t cause this travesty. I didn’t do it! The only times I’ve even crossed the threshold into the back yard have been to let the dog out.  (She didn’t do it, either.  She’s not tall enough!)

I don’t have far to look, though, to see the culprit in this dastardly episode of deadgetation:

It’s August in Texas.  We know it’s going to be hot.  We’re used to gingerly lowering ourselves on the steaming surface of the seats in the car. We know how to run errands in the morning and evening and huddle inside air conditioned spaces in the hot part of the afternoon.  One hundred degrees outside is pretty much a given in this part of Texas in August.  But 110, several days in a row?  Even seasoned cows and cowboys are keeling over. Sadly, there have already been fourteen heat-related deaths in our area, and August has just begun. This summer the hot part of the day has been…all day and night.  There has been no nighttime relief.  It’s 10:30 p.m as I write this, and the temperature is still 93 degrees.

It’s wearing on my attitude.  I feel irritable and grumpy, and I have a stirring compulsion to check the weather forecast several times a day just in case a freak storm is blowing up and is headed our way.  In fact, it’s the lack of rain that makes me crazy.  I adore all kinds of rain.  At this point, I am so starved for the smell, sight, and feel of rain that I fantasize about all the different kinds of rain God sends in His timing.  It would be nice to have one day of some kind of rain as described by Forrest Gump himself:

At church today we prayed for our nation. We acknowledged our sin and asked the Lord to have mercy on us.  We are so dependent upon the Lord for so many things. Sadly, we don’t notice our blessings sometimes until He removes them. We need Him desperately. Perhaps the Psalmist wrote his verse in the middle of an August heat wave in Israel:

¹ As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
² I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?
Psalm 42:1-2

Like the deer, we are panting for water. Our trees and shrubs are dying. One town of 1200 people —  just forty miles away — ran out of water today and shut down the water supply. Please pray for our nation.  Our God is bigger than any drought, stronger than any heat wave. As we struggle to cope with the “deadgetation” around us in this massive heat wave, He still assures us he will never leave us or forsake us…and he promises that one day all things will be made new.