But as for me, I would seek God,
And to God I would commit my cause—
Who does great things, and unsearchable
Marvelous things without number.
He gives rain on the earth,
And sends waters on the fields.
Job 5:8-10
Think about what Eliphaz said there. When he thinks of the “great” and “unsearchable” and “marvelous” works of God he thinks of rain. Rain? Is that what he said? Is it really all the incredible that God makes it rain? Is that what you think when you see rain? Do you think of how great and unsearchable and marvelous God’s works are when all it does is rain?
Let’s say you are a farmer down in South Georgia, and your land is really dry right now. (According to one state climatologist we’re in the middle of an “extreme” drought, a drought category that normally happens once every fifty years.) You’re at least 10 inches behind and you need water badly, but how is all that water going to get to you?
Irrigation is out of the question. It’s just too much water. It is going to have to come from the sky. But before the water can fall from the sky it has to first get into the sky. How does water get up there? Primarily by a process called evaporation. Evaporation is what happens when water changes from a liquid to a gas. In other words, it is how water floats up to the clouds.
Where are you going to get that much water though? Where will all this water come from? It will come from oceans, lakes, rivers, soil, and plants from all around the country and from all around the world. Some of this water might travel thousands of miles before it falls.
But how does this water coming from various parts of the world get to your land in South Georgia? That’s simple. It is blown through the sky by the wind in the form of clouds.
Or is it that simple? There is going to have to be a lot of water in those clouds. Like we said, you’re at least 10 inches behind! But you don’t really want all of that at once (10 inches at a time is usually not a good thing). How about just an inch of rain for starters? Would that be good? Sure, and that’s a lot less water to transport. So how much water is that? Try 27,154 gallons! That’s how much you’ll need to water an acre with one inch of rain. So if you have a 1,000-acre farm you will need over 27 million gallons!
Can clouds carry that much water? Sure they can. But how much, you ask, does 27 million gallons weigh? Well, a gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds, so 27 million gallons would weigh approximately 225 million pounds! And remember, we’re not talking about 10 inches all at once. That’s just for an inch!
How big would clouds carrying 225 million pounds of water be? Let’s just say they will be big. Really, really big!
So, the water evaporates all over the world and collects in the sky in really, really big clouds and is blown thousands of miles by the wind to south Georgia and dumps 225 million pounds of water onto your land. Well, it doesn’t literally dump all that water at once. That would be a bad thing. The clouds actually just dribble the water down in drops of water that are big enough to not evaporate on the way down and small enough that they don’t produce catastrophic results below.
And that, in a nutshell, is how it happens. Now we haven’t talked about condensation, sublimation, coalescence, evaporative equilibrium, Raoult’s law, or evapotranspiration! We’ve just covered the simple stuff for you.
But we think that is enough. With that we feel quite confident that we can agree with Eliphaz that rain is no small work of God, but rather a “great” and “unsearchable” and “marvelous” one!
Are there any among the idols of the nations that can cause rain?
Or can the heavens give showers?
Are You not He, O LORD our God?
Therefore we will wait for You,
Since You have made all these.
Jeremiah 14:22