(Part I)
Anglican Morning Devotion for 30 January 2022 Anno Domin
a ministry of the Anglican Orthodox Communion Worldwide
“My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: 3Because I will publish the name of the Lord”. (Deuteronomy 32:2-3)
“ . . . . and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. 14And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. 15And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.” (Exodus 16:13-15; all scripture quoted is from the King James Version)
Dew Point definition: the atmospheric temperature (varying according to pressure and humidity) below which water droplets begin to condense and dew can form.
What causes dew to form in nature? Warm air is capable of holding more moisture than colder air. Overnight, the ambient temperature of the air drops. When it reaches a certain temperature, commensurate with its moisture content, the moisture will begin to fall out of the air to form rain or dew. Scientists refer to that point as the Dew-Point. But in the case of dew, there are no droplets of water that fall from the air, rather the moisture distills on the flora of the earth. This generally happens in early morning when the air is at its coolest point, and the flora as well has cooled. The dew silently forms on the leaves of green plants or petals of roses and other flowers. No one can see it forming, it just gradually appears as a vapor forms above a morning pond.
Because of her love of gardening, my mother’s favorite hymn was, “I Come to the Garden Alone.” Truly, in most cases, the dew was still on the roses at that early hour of her rising. Dew is water taken from the air; and our Friend, Jesus Christ – the Fountain of Life – is present when all is still and our hearts serene.
Dew does not fall with the clash of thunder and lightning. In fact, dew does not fall at all – it rather forms silently and imperceptibly upon the foliage and flowers of the garden of the soul. God often covers His blessings and presence with the mystery of the natural dews, or of clouds, or of Temple Veils just as He did the Manna.
I have previously written devotions of the forming of the Dew, so I will try to cover ground less traveled in those previous devotions concerning Dew and the mystery of its forming. I refer to the formation of dew as a mystery, though we understand its scientific operations because it forms without our notice. It distills silently, invisibly and imperceptibly. The beauty of this mystery is best described in that great old classic hymn, O Worship the King:
Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.
One of the heavenly qualities of dew is its time of forming – most often at the morning hour. It heralds a new beginning. My father used to say that each believer is given a clean, white sheet of paper each morning. Throughout the day, we make smudges and disfigurations on that paper; but, next morning, the paper is made clean by God and we proceed anew. That describes to me the beauty of the morning sunrise and the accompanying dews.
God’s Word tells us: “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” (Genesis 2:5-6) I believe this to be the only conclusion that can be drawn from this passage. That mist was the heavy primordial dews of Eden.
Dew is an amazing and wonderful gift of God to life. In a subsequent devotion, we will discuss how the silent coming of the DEW can be compared to the Word of God.
(To be continued)
