When the Rain Does Come

It’s a grey and wet day, the fifth day of rain this week. For long, dusty months we’ve been praying and watching the sky as our water tanks empty and the river runs low. So this is welcome. But the mud and fog look different than what we’ve gotten used to.

When black clouds roll in pregnant with precious rain, and the cracked ground softens and the dirt roads run like muddy streams, the world changes for a while. No sunshine. No birds singing. All the colors somehow sharper against the dark sky.

And when the rain comes especially hard, sometimes the world changes permanently. Landslides happen and bridges are swept away. And we are left feeling disoriented and unsure of how to get where we’d been planning to go.

The rain is a gift, but it’s one that changes the landscape.

Something like the way my heart has changed recently. There are parts of me that feel unfamiliar, broken and shifted, and I’m not sure how to get where I’d been planning to go.

God has poured out His blessings on me, and it isn’t comfortable. It isn’t what I expected. I knew something in me was cracked and withered, and I prayed for healing. But when the wind started to blow and the sun disappeared, I wondered what God was doing.

And when the rain came hard and cut deep into the stony places in me, I could barely breathe. This couldn’t be right.

But now here I am. On my knees in the middle of a flood.

On my knees. Where I belong.

Bowed low, being washed by rushing blessings that strip the old and soak the soil, where life waits ready to color the world new.

And I all can do is worship.

“Unfailing love and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed! Truth springs up from the earth, and righteousness smiles down from heaven. Yes, the LORD pours down his blessings. Our land will yield its bountiful crops.” ~ Psalm 85:10-12