Miracle at Centerburg

MIRACLE AT CENTERBURG

Robert Neulieb, Ph.D.

Saturday was another bright sunny July day in the Midwest town of Centerburg.  Ball players and picnickers filled the park at the city’s edge.  Haze restricted the view from Look Out Ridge but promised to yield yet another brilliant glowing red sunset.

The corn behind the fence on the ridge looked stunted and withered.  The small no name stream flowing down the ridge near a park’s edge had been affectionately called tinkle brook by generations of children and the pool at the bottom likewise called the frog pond.  This July no tinkles, no croaks, no splashes.

Then it happened.  At the western horizon a tiny cloud appeared- more gathered and soon the sky blackened.  Ball players and picnickers scurried for shelter to the clash of thunder and silhouetted by lightening.  For more than an hour and a half the rain fell.

On Monday the Centerburg Weekly led with the headline “Million Dollar Rain”.  It was that and then some.  The corn, soy beans and other crops recuperated.  Tinkle brook tinkled for the children; frogs would soon croak and slash in the pool.  Further down in the article the word “miracle” appeared. 

But a miracle?   The dry spell certainly was severe and unusual but hardy unprecedented in the two hundred twenty year history of Centerburg.  One year no “million dollar rain” rescued the crops or made the brook tinkle or frogs croak and splash.  Centerburg farmers have long fretted over too much and especially too little rain.

Yet it was a miracle dating back long before the founding of Centerburg, long before the first mammal opened its eyes or the first dinosaur walked on earth - actually even long before the amoeba or algae evolved.  The miracle was fresh “clean” water falling on a planet largely covered with salty “dirty” water.

Water distillation is a simple high school chemistry laboratory experiment.  The process has been further developed to serve industrial needs.  What makes rain a miracle?  No smoke, ashes or soot – no strip mines, tar sands or oil fields.  Chemistry experiments and industrial processes require that part of the earth be sacrificed.  The sun has all the equivalences of smoke, ashes, soot, strip mines, tar sands, oil fields and so much more as it slowly burns to extinction while radiating energy, some of which strikes the earth.  With rain what is sacrificed is part of the sun!