Many have made comments and suggestions regarding recovery from the drought conditions. We all must conserve water. None of the suggestions that I have seen offered the only solution, which is beseeching God's blessing.

The Prophet Jeremiah reminded us in Chapter 5: "They do not say in their heart, let us now fear the Lord our God, who gives rain, both the former and the latter, in its season."

The Lord declared: "Do you not fear Me? Will you not tremble at my presence, who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea?"

When those sea boundaries are violated, disasters (floods, hurricanes, tsunamis) destroy lives, homes, livelihoods. God also has established boundaries for human behavior, and we argue that we have a "right" to violate these boundaries.

Jeremiah reminds us (vs. 25): "Your iniquities have turned these things (seasonal rains) away and your sins have withheld good from you."

It's time to repent and pray for beneficial rain. Then God, in His compassion, will restore the needed rain and His goodness to us.

J. Russell Capps

Raleigh