Today I shall describe to you the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I was driving down a country highway (459th Avenue, to be exact) on 19 April, 2003. It was the beginning of the summer crop season. The past month had been poor for the farmers; the area was already feeling the effects of what would come to be a drought summer.

As I drove, I suddenly came to a deep valley. My car began to climb the hill out of the depression, and I saw something that, quite honestly, made me slow to a stop on the empty highway. On the long, flat surface of the hill, there was a cornfield. The corn had not yet grown, and the field was a large area of brown dirt.

Plowed into the field on the side of the hill was a request to God:

RAIN

The word was black on its dry brown background. It stood there, each letter probably thirty feet high. The word itself extended perhaps sixty feet. It was positively massive. RAIN. The field itself, one long expanse of dirt, seemed to be begging God. RAIN.

I'm not religious. I don't say my prayers, I don't pay attention to Mass. I don't read the Bible, and I've never attempted to find myself through other religions. But I do believe in God. It sounds silly, but I believe in God because of a drought, a dry, unpleasant April day, and a dirt cornfield. I believe in God because of RAIN. I believe in God because of what happened on the 20th of April.

It rained.