They say a little rain must fall into every life. And I know some people who truly like rain, just not in the way that saying means it.
Of course, when I quote that saying, we all know that I’m speaking of trials, which no one actually enjoys. Especially if it hits them at a personal level.
I remember one of those years when everything seemed to go wrong. It was back in the day when I wrote poetry and music, none of which is any good, but one carried the notion of Murphy’s Law and porches collapsing, and the parked car being hit in the street.
You know what I’m talking about, right?
When the new tub springs a leak and the kitchen ceiling below gets water-logged. When the wind blows shingles from the roof and you are praying you don’t have to pay for a new one. When your family member slips on the treadmill and puts a hole in the wall. When the toilet won’t shut off at bedtime and you just want to go to sleep.
Those are life’s annoyances, yes? Problems. But not real problems. Not trials that strip our hearts bare.
Annoyances are like raindrops, but real trials are the floods that want to knock us down and destroy us. They sweep us up in the undertow and we gasp for air and wonder if our heart can keep on beating. Those are the kinds of rains we could happily do without.
I’m going to be honest here. We’ve had some of those moments, those trials that feel like floods crash through our family this year. My husband lost a brother, and sometimes I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that he is gone. Truth is, we had thought we had so much time. He had moved west where our kids are — only slightly north of them, and we had dreamed of being closer to all. The brothers could have golfed together and we could have caught up on years of separation. But time was not our friend.
This weekend we will say goodbye to another sibling-in-law. She was in the family long before I joined it, and that was more than forty years ago. Randy and I have some special memories of talking about Jesus and laughing together with her. But she lost a long-fought battle last week and so we feel this ache in our hearts that only heaven will erase. We know she is finally free of suffering, and I wish I could see what she sees now. It’s the waiting that is hard. It’s the living in the here and now while we watch our loved ones slip away that hurts in the deep places.
Amy Grant sings a song that is so poignant and true called, “Our Time is Now.” In it she says that “time is illusion”. And really, if you stop and think about that, she’s right. God is outside of time, so to Him, there is no entrapment in the trials of life. He already knows exactly how each moment will come and go, what is and what isn’t, how each moment will begin and end. To us, we see the illusion of time, the vision of what feels like a reality that will last forever.
But God sees differently.
God holds the world, holds us, in the palm of His hand. He isn’t restricted by our humanity or our time zone or our culture or our doubts and fears. He knows the rain that is falling in our life–the good kind we enjoy and the kind that we don’t. And as the kind that we don’t mingles with our tears, He brushes them gently with his fingers and cups our face and reminds us that He knows.
He sees.
He cares about the details of our lives.
A lot of people these days don’t believe that any more. They don’t think the Bible is true in the Word-of-God sense. Or at the very least they don’t believe God cares about us at a detailed level.
And that saddens me. Because the God who formed me in my mother’s womb, who formed my kids in mine and carried them safely to live and breath this earth’s air–the God who breaths the air into our lungs in the first place and says, “I love you this much”, with arms stretched wide to pull us close–that God wants us to trust Him with the rain that falls. With the hurts that stretch us thin. With the trials that come into every life, big or small.
I believe God cares about us as we are forced to fix the leaky faucet, and I believe He holds us closest when we grieve, whatever the cause. He isn’t happy to see us hurting. He is the God of all comfort. He is the God of all grace. He is the One who is true.
And when into every life a little rain falls…He is the One who shelters us beneath the shadow of His wings. If we but let Him.
~Selah
