We love small talk about the weather. It is an infectious habit, and one in which many have been indulging keenly in the midst of this summer’s prolonged heatwave. The Met Office’s provisional statistics suggest it was the third warmest July on record in the UK (‘only the third?!’ we cry). The hottest recorded temperature was in Faversham in 2003, when it hit 38.5°C. This weekend, we have been promised rain and I expect few of us will feel the need to coop up indoors away from it. Some of us will be walking our ‘Pilgrimage & Pub’ trip out to St Margaret’s, Binsey, and some of us may well be singing with delight at the refreshment of rain.

Rain is, to state the obvious, so profoundly needed for our well-being and to sustain the earth. It is easy to see why, in a somewhat primitive sense, it has carried associations of God’s blessing and providence, and why drought can seem like a curse for those who experience it. King Solomon, in a prayer to God at the dedication of the Jerusalem Temple, asserts that when ‘heaven is shut up and there is no rain’ it is ‘because they have sinned against you’ (1 Kings 8.35a). Such a straightforward and moralistic approach to causation (and, indeed, meteorology) can hardly be sustained. No, God doesn’t turn the heat up to pay us back for being a bit naughty. Yet in a more nuanced way we are being faced with the consequences that a consumption- and convenience-based society may be having, long-term, on the world around us – the world that God has charged us to care for and protect. While most of us still have running water, hosepipes, and desk fans, it is easy to lose sight of our great and direct reliance on the earth’s health and vitality, and the rain that nourishes it. As we are flustered in the heat, and relieved by the rain, let us keep in mind those who face its impact more harshly, those for whom the heat and the drought carry threats we can barely begin to understand.

O Lord of heaven and earth,
creator of light and darkness,
sunshine and rain;
look upon all you have made
and in your grace sustain all creation
with your heavenly blessing;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.