Bring down the rain....

I have been wanting to post about this ever since I heard something like this weeks ago on a national talk radio show. What I heard may not seem that revolutionary to anyone at all. To me it was eye poppingly-light bulb momentish. Here's my version.

Imagine the beauty of the pacific northwest. Rich abundant flowers, greenery, lush gardens filled with sweet visual treats that grow profusely. My sister and her husband visited there this summer and described it as what "the garden of Eden" must have looked like. I know my sister said she felt like she was transported into another world at times. Other worldly beauty in certain cliff side forests jutting up to the sea, or watching whales, or being on an enchanting island in the sea, as she told me.

What makes all that beauty possible? What one element would, if cut off, starve the natural beauty of that place?

RAIN. and LOTS of it. Showers , storms, down pours and trickles, and more. Rain.

Now compare the topography of the desert, say in New Mexico. Could there ever exist such lushness? Could there ever grow succulent gardens filled with freshly whetted flowers? No. Because this southwestern area is devoid of large amounts of rain showers.

Now, lets think about the rainstorms of our lives.. the downpours. Do we as a society tend to like or dislike the them? Do we tend to want to do everything we can to avoid them like the plague?I know I do. I also know that I will do all I can (as did my own parents) to help my own children be kept away from life's rainstorms, to protect them. But what happened to the ground that had no rain? It dries up. It becomes a bland dead landscape with no ability to grow some of God's most glorious creations.

Have you ever considered that the rainstorms of our lives are divinely placed to give us the ability to bloom in the most amazing way we could have ever fathomed? To blossom into the most ultimately beautiful flower only a loving creator could know was laying there dormant? What potentially glorious dormant bulbs are planted in each one of us? Just think, by embracing our rainstorms in life, we can unlock those dormant potentialities.

When I think of my own difficulties this way... I just want to let it rain.