Rain

July 6, 2019

If you close your eyes and just listen, you’d be hard pressed to tell whether it is raining or just the creek running. Of course, if you stepped outside, you’d know, but in the middle of the night, the sound is all that’s there, steady and constant. We’ve gotten so used to it that we often have to deliberately focus our attention before we notice it. But it’s always there, a bit softer in the winter when the creek is half-hidden beneath the snow and ice, louder and sometimes furious in the summer after a sudden downpour. 

God’s mercy and grace is like that; constant, always there, flowing like the creek behind our house. It’s the steady backdrop to our lives, so much so that we often are unaware of it. Only in time of storm, when we bend like the trees to the wind, do we realize the grace flowing, rushing in a torrent through our lives. One of the reasons I write every day is to remind myself of that grace, flowing like a river. The day by day ordinariness of life often drowns out the sound of the grace. The eyes of our hearts are closed and we can’t tell the difference between the stormy rains that pour down and the streams of mercy that flow. We have to actually get up, go to the window, and look. So I write. Writing is the window through which I peer to see if it’s a storm or simply daily grace.