Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on April 23, 2025

I don’t know if there’s a better time of year on the ranch than the tail end of calving season, those first summerish days, when the mornings are still crisp and cool, and the warming earth is fragrant and greening up. The abundance of baby animal life, the springing up of flowers in the garden, the first wildflowers, the blossoming of the fruit trees, and the lilac bush heavy with dark purple buds are reminders of the order woven into this world. Spring always follows winter, summer always follows spring, and after a good calving season optimism runs high, especially when the cattle market is where it is at today. We are looking forward to some of the best of the year’s ranch work, the sorting and pairing out of the cows and calves, long days in the open air, the brandings, and getting bulls out.

But behind it is a glimmer of uncertainty. When a dry winter leads into a dry spring, when we watch spring storm system after spring storm system fail to materialize, and little shots of rain barely manage to wet the ground, when dams are bone dry and the window for growing grass gets narrower and narrower, it is easy for that optimism to take a back seat to negativity, or what some of us might simply call “being realistic.”

It is hard to watch as the grass springs up in the warm summer-like temps, but stops growing for lack of moisture. It leaves a little pit in your stomach to see the dust devils blow down in the stubble of the hayfield, and to feel the unyielding, cracking ground beneath each step. If the dry conditions continue, the grass will head out early and essentially be done, and no amount of rain can cause a finished blade of grass to finish growing.

Grasses grow and mature in different seasons, so even if we miss the window for the early spring grasses, we can still grow later season grasses, but those early rains are incredibly important for healthy summer pastures and growing enough for winter forage. Healthy summer pastures make for cattle that are well-summered, and well-summered cattle have better conception rates and lower rates of disease, and then handle the winter well. Cattle that are well-wintered, with good winter forage, handle calving well, and produce plenty of milk for their calves, who are vibrant and healthy. And on it goes.

What happens now has ripple effects long into the distance. A rancher worrying over a lack of rain now is never thinking just about right now, but about 2 or 12 months down the road.

It can be worrisome. It is easy to become discouraged or to feel helpless in the face of things over which we have no control. A spring without rain provides ample opportunity for our complaints, for bitterness or resentment to spring up, or for us to wallow in uncertainty and take it out on those closest to us. All those are unconstructive and even deconstructive reactions, over which we absolutely have control. We can choose to wallow, or we can look higher.

We may not have control over the rain, or over other situations in which we find ourselves. But there is Someone who does.

And so we pray for rain, trusting that He hears, and that He cares.  

We pray for the moisture needed to grow grass.

We pray for the ability to steward our livestock well, to give them what they need to thrive.

We pray for fruitfulness in our endeavors, to the glory of God.

We reflect on His faithfulness over the years and over the generations.

We acknowledge His ability to provide exactly what we need, with eternity in mind, even if it isn’t what we think we need, or what we want at this moment.

We acknowledge that what we perceive to be our needs can be extremely short-sighted, and that our Heavenly Father has purposes that are much higher than merely the health of the pasture grass or the conception rates on our heifers.

There will be hard years. There have been plenty of hard years before, plenty of uncertainty, plenty of downturns in the market and years the grasshoppers ate everything. We have no trouble remembering those things, and tend to have a harder time remembering the good years, the years of rain and plenty and full dams, or the surprising ways needs were met against all expectations.

A spring without rain is a reminder that nowhere have we been promised everything we hope for in life and, more importantly, all those details are actually in the loving and perfect care of the same Someone who orders the seasons and keeps the earth spinning on her axis, the same Someone that has brought rain in its season for millennia, and Who has promised that, ”While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

We can worry about the balance in our bank account, the food on our plates, the clothes on our backs, the cars we drive, the houses we inhabit – But our Heavenly Father knows what we need, and if He feeds the sparrows and clothes the fields, He also cares about our needs.

So, we pray for rain. And leave it safely in God’s hands.