RAIN original manuscript
Rain, or precipitation, is a multitude of falling drops of water formed when tiny droplets in clouds merge and grow heavy enough to fall to the ground.
Rain clouds often spread a gray darkness across the sky before the first drop appears.
Science explains rain through the water cycle: water evaporates, rises and cools, condenses into clouds, then falls back as rain.
An enormous number of droplets can join together to form just one raindrop, and rain is essential for both humans and animals, watering fields, filling rivers, and sustaining life.
At the same time, the rain that gently feeds the earth can, in great storms, become a devastating flood.
Among all the floods remembered in Scripture, the greatest is the Genesis Flood, reaching back thousands of years.
In the days of Noah, the earth was full of evil, corruption, and violence.
In that dark generation, Noah walked with God while others ignored Him.
God warned Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence," and He announced that judgment was coming (Genesis 6:13).
In obedience, Noah built an ark as God commanded.
People laughed and ignored the warning, but when the ark was finished, Noah and his family entered with pairs of every kind of animal.
In time, the rain began - pouring without pause for forty days and forty nights - until everything outside the ark perished.
Noah and his family, along with all who were in the ark, finally stepped out onto a washed world when the waters receded.
Now the earth appeared fresh and clean; the skies opened, and across the clouds God painted a rainbow.
God said, "I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth ... the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh" (Genesis 9:13, 15).
Now every rain ends under that same promise.
No storm is final, because a rainbow still reminds us of God's everlasting covenant - and in every personal rain of hopelessness or sorrow, there can still be a rainbow of comfort and hope.