Rain, Rain, What a Day!

 Rain.
Rain.  More rain.
I believe we have had 4 or 5 sunny days this month.  Waking to another gray, dreary, soggy morning makes me feel like Eyore; slumped shoulders, countenance downcast. 
If this were October, we would expect it, and cope with it much better.  But this is June.  Summer.

It doesn’t seem right.  Or fair.
Why does the weather effect us so?  What is it that is so discouraging about the lack of sunshine?  

Why are we so bothered by what seems to be unjust?

I think it is our very soul, crying out that life wasn’t supposed to be this way.

We were made for something else, somewhere else. 

We long for the place or time where all is right, good, just, fair. 

We long for heaven.

It is deep in our very nature to long for an eternal day with no more crying, 

no more sorrow. 

Or rain.

 

" There is coming  day
When no heartache shall come…

..All is peace forever more
on that happy golden shore.."

I recall my grandma singing bluegrass and hymns when I was a child.  I always wondered why they were all about dying and heaven.  I thought she was obsessively morbid. 

But now, I behold something deeper. 

She grew up in deep poverty, during the depression.  Times were bad. 

Those songs became her hope for the future. 

This life would be gone someday, time here is short, like the grass that fades away.  

The African slaves coped with their misery in the same way. 

As did the psalmist.

“I have set the LORD always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.  Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices, my flesh also shall rest in hope,  Thou will show me the path of life:  in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”  Psalm 16:8,9,11.

By focusing her mind on the glory to come,

Grandma lifted her spirits and gave her bleak and desperate days a ray of sunshine,

a bounce in her step to keep on, 

for something better was awaiting. 

Like knowing you have chocolate hid away that none of the kids know about.  

Or secretively having bought a surprise gift for your sweet heart. 

The hope of heaven should give us that same squealing, goose-bumpy anticipation that energizes us.
 

 

 Although rain does not compare to the trails others have faced, I can learn from history to keep my eyes on the eternal.  

There is all of heaven to attain some sweet day! 

As I take heart in that thought, allowing it to wash me with fresh perspective,  I am rejuvenated, revived.  I can smile at the trial, the tribulation, or the rain,  in whatever my plight, and be joyously content.

""And forever I will be
With the one who died for me
What a day,
Glorious day
That will be!"