Article August 23, 1999 Issue

Who'll stop the rain?

God is in control.

By Cheryl F. M. Petersen

My Husband and I had just started farming a cherry orchard together. A few days before our first harvest, it rained. The rain poured and poured, leaving split, damaged cherries. The cherries dropped to the ground, unusable.

After a few years of struggling with the sensitive cherries, my husband had an idea. With what little money we had, he bought old, unused, self-propelled sprayers and converted them into blowers. After each rain, we pulled them through the orchard behind our small tractors. The machines blew the rain off the cherries, deterring the splitting and saving our harvests. We were happy with the results, but we soon learned that this happiness needed to be grounded in more than a machine.

During another particularly wet spring, the machines broke down after days and nights of heavy use. And it was still raining. My weary husband and I went to the house. All that effort for nothing. My husband wept silently. But he lifted his head when I came near, and we helped each other turn to God.

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