THE DEWDROP
THE DEWDROP
Job. 38:28: “Hath the rain a father? Or who has begotten the drops of dew?”
Sunday Evening Service May 4, 2014, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
The dewdrop is a small affair; but as is all creation, a revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit
Dew is water that condenses upon vegetation during the night and early morning hours.
Job 38:28: “Hath the rain a father? Or who has begotten the drops of dew?”
Jesus Christ, “the Word of God” is Heaven’s Dew unto His people. He personifies the Father’s doctrine and speech when came to earth from Heaven…”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.” (Deut. 32:2). The Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus just as the dew covered the manna, a type of Him who is the “bread of life”. Jesus’ intercession in the Garden of Gethsemane was like the dew, “the drops of the night”. Gideon’s soaking fleece reveals the life of Jesus wrung out on the cross, like “a bowl full of water”.
John Ross MacDuff wrote a charming parable of The Story of a Dewdrop.
I will only be able to share short excerpts tonight from this historical masterpiece. Therefore, I paraphrased the story using the richest nuggets. The book is in the public domain.
The Story of a Dew Drop
“Three birds of very favorable repute in these regions met together one evening---a Thrush, a Lark, and a Nightingale. And all for what purpose? It was a queer one---to hold a solemn conference about a dewdrop.
The three feathered friends selected the close of a bright day in early summer as the appropriate time for their council; just when things in outer nature were looking their best. The tree foliage had reached perfection; all the mosses, too, looked so green and fresh; the various ferns were uncoiling themselves among the rocks and shady nooks by the stream.
On this occasion the sun coaxed his setting beams into a panorama of gorgeous color. Belts of golden cloud were streaking the western sky. It was unmistakably sundown. The groves, dells and hedge-rows which had kept up a goodly concert the live-long day, were now silent. Their winged tenants had, one after another, slunk to their nests, with very tired throats.
A stone’s throw higher up the valley, the music of the brook fed by recent rains, rattled in gleeful style over a bed of white and grey pebbles---the tiny limpid waves chasing one another as if they were playing hide-and-seek. It had now reached a quieter spot where, it still kept up a gentle, soothing evening song, a lullaby peculiar to itself.
Nature had rung her curfew bell and the sentry stars were coming out, one by one, to keep their night watch.
It was a great puzzle to the curious representative members of the bird-world where the Dewdrop came from; why it had come about? And still a greater puzzle, what it was made of?
The Dewdrop was evidently a visitor from some unknown land. These birds, in succession (with the curiosity birds generally have) had endeavored by stealth to track its dainty footsteps. The Dewdrop managed to perch itself so daintily on the tip of a roseleaf. The leaf was not only pretty in itself, of a subdued delicate green, but it hung right over a full-blown rose with a mass of pink leaves.
The Thrush, with his brown plumage and yellow spotted neck, being the biggest, and if anything the most talkative of the three, began the conversation.
The consultation was a long and an animated one, too long indeed to report in full, besides there being a considerable amount of bird-language called chattering.
Well said the Thrush, summing up the discussion, “I must now be off to bed. So too must the Lark, whose left eye was beginning to droop as he stood with one leg up. “We shall leave to you, Bird of the night” –as he addressed the Nightingale. “We shall leave to you the first interview with this little sparkling thing from Heaven. We shall defer our visit till tomorrow.”
So away the two brown-winged companions sped. The Nightingale was left all alone. Being fully acquainted with the position of the rose-leaf, he took wing, and settled himself on the branch of a birch close by. He forthwith began to pipe one of his very best and most enchanting songs. “Answer me, pretty Dewdrop,” he said. But the Dewdrop was silent. It appeared to not pay the slightest attention. The Nightingale continued, “Pretty little noiseless thing, what are you? Where were you born? You appear sad.”
At last the Dewdrop replied in the quietest, mildest, silveriest voice imaginable. “I have reason to be sad. “You call me a Dewdrop, but in truth I am not, I am a teardrop; a teardrop which fell from the sky.”
The Nightingale was astonished. Tell me what you mean.
“The sky always weeps at the loss of the Sun; and no wonder. I tell you again, believe it or not as you please, I am one of the tears it shed tonight. You need not grieve for me. I shall be all right when the Sun appears again.”
I always get bright when the Sun shows himself. Look up to those stars, glittering in the sky. Do you know how they twinkle so? It is because they are either suns themselves or else get light from that beautiful Sun you saw some time ago tingeing the sky with red and gold. “My Sun”, continued the dwarf thing of mystery, raisings its tones, with a sort of conscious pride.
The Dewdrop then turned on the leafy bed, shut both eyes, and went to sleep. The Nightingale said, “Good night to you, little teardrop, or dewdrop. The nightingale few away to perch among the old hawthorns to serenade until morning.
“Good night, kind bird” replied the Dewdrop. Thank you for thinking of me in my loneliness. As the Nightingale burst forth in song, it seemed that every star in heaven might hear and appreciate his melodies.
It was now morning. The mist still slept drowsily in the valley. Already our friend the Thrush was on his round of daily work and pleasure; as active and busy as the thrush family always is. Off he sped until he found himself perched on a branch right above where the rose and the dewdrop were.
How he piped, and chirruped, and throstled! After these musical preliminaries, our new friend (Songster No. 2) ventured by. The Nightingale had told him the dewdrop was a teardrop. “A teardrop” indeed! There was not a bit of the tear about it. It was like a bright, unmistakable, beautiful diamond. How it glistened and sparkled; and with all the prismatic colors! “What in the world can be so lovely, silent sleeper on the rose leaf, with your round crystal cheeks? Dewdrop we thought you were; teardrop you say you are: If you are not a diamond set in rubies---stolen, for all I know, from yesterday’s rainbow---you certainly look like one.”
“I am indeed a diamond,” answered the Dewdrop. “Look at me. "Do you not say I am fit for a monarch’s crown?" It is the monarch’s crown I am presently to be set in. Every day I meet the Queen of the Morning. I see her even now advancing with her rosy feet, “sowing the earth with pearls. See for yourself, how the few stars which still linger in the sky, and which with their glittering torches lighted her out of the Eastern Gate are paling every minute behind her!” She says, “ of all the jewels in her tiara there is not one she is fonder of, or proud of, than me.” “Away, away, little bird,” stammered out the dewdrop. I must prepare to meet this queen Aurora. But, it added in a kind of after thought, “the procession will soon be over; come back shortly and see if, if you please.”
The Thrush looked and to his wonder sorrow and amazement, lo, the leaf was empty. Not a trace of either dewdrop or diamond. It was evident that the Queen of the Morning, in passing by had picked up the dew diamond, and inserted it in her crown.
Away up in the blue morning sky and the light fleecy clouds, the Sun has climbed higher. It is now above the tallest of the poplars. The cattle are again lowing the fat meadows. High in that bright dome of azure, there is a delightful frolicsome twitter heard. It is not the Nightingale; no not so clear and mellow as that. Not the Thrust; no not so loud or gushing as that. It is our little friend the Lark. Oh! How merry he is! More so than either of the other two. He is floating, soaring, sauntering and curtseying, skimming and dipping, rollicking and frolicking.
The Queen of the Morning had come with all her court, and troupe of gay courtiers. The gates of day had unbarred for her. Pink clouds, quite like tiny angels with wings, were holding up her train, discharging tiny golden arrows from silver bows; others to paint in delicate hues of amber and purples the fringes of clouds.
Each flower joined the royal procession. All of creation joined as performers in this choir of nature. The Blackbird, Redbreast, and Goldfinch each took part with striking effect. Even the Swallow in his own quiet way twittered, and the Beetle droned and the Bee hummed.
When the Queen came to a pause, with radiant grace, she put her hand up to her crown and took out the diamond. There was a little crimson cloud that happened to be floating past at the moment. She laid the lustrous gem on this roseate pillow; then slowly she and all her entourage vanished from sight.
What does this have to do with our friend the Lark? His quick little eye had discerned what our eyes cannot see. He had watched everything. He sees that flashing speck of light lying so daintily on its cushion cloud. “Pretty sparking thing, I know what you are. You are a rare diamond just taken from the crown of the Queen of the Morning. But, I confess, you look too, very like the dewdrop I spied at distance a few hours ago, on the tip of a rose-leaf.”
The Dewdrop replied, “though the Queen of the Morning borrowed me, I am really and truly a jewel from the crown of the Sun; that when he took off his royal robes last evening, to lay his head on his nightly pillow, I dropped out of his crown and tumbled down to the earth. “Though they call me Diamond, I like quite as well the name with which God’s beautiful mist baptized me, that of a Dewdrop. Just as the Queen of the Morning vanished, I am about to do the same myself. I am going to my Palace yonder. I should rather perhaps say my Home.”
It is said by people who are wise about bird-lore that the lark family has eyes almost like a microscope; things invisible to us are said to be quite visible to them.
What the Lark saw or thought he saw was a wonderful army on march of a million, million little dewdrops. The Lark says to them, “where is your home? “The Sun! the Sun!" One after the other answered. The dewdrop was a tear that fell from the sky because the Sun was gone. We are all parts of the Sun. We are on our way again to the golden entrance to his Palace.”
The army of misty drops rose higher and higher. The Lark rising with them until his little wings were tired. When he could act as convoy no father, down he came. He took breath after the exhaustion and excitement and then hastened straight to the home of the Nightingale and Thrush to tell of the glorious ascent of the Dewdrop on the rose-leaf; its severance into a million fragments; and how these in the shape of a great army, had marched right within the Sun’s Golden Gates!
“An Angel’s Whisper”
“The Soul and the spirit of Man---apart from the Great Son of God becomes a teardrop. All is dark to it, when that All-glorious source of Light and Love is away, earth’s sweetest songs cannot cheer it. But when the morning comes, and the Son appears, the teardrop becomes a dewdrop---gleaming like a diamond in that peerless radiance. And at death, when it seems to be dissolved, and has apparently vanished from sight, it is exhaled---not annihilated. It passes upward to the Golden Gates, to be lost in the splendor of the Everlasting Light!”
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Believers have been filled with the Holy spirit, “the dew of heaven”. The absence of the dew’s anointing, depicting the King’s favor and blessing will result in a spiritual famine. We are like “drops of dew” begotten by the Father of spirits. The unity of the spirit was described by the psalmist to be like dew, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like…the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion…Micah prophesied about the end-time church, “And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass” (Mic. 5:7).
Isa. 18:4: “The Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
Isa. 26:19: “Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise, “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for your dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.”
Psa. 133:3: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!...as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for ever more. “
Zech. 8:12: “For the seed shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things.”
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
I entered into the labors of John Ross MacDuff, The Story of the Dew Drop;
Understanding Types, Shadows, and Names by: Kelley Varner.
Both Gentlemen have gone to heaven and are living in the splendor of the Everlasting Light of which both wrote about so eloquently.