Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Deoviton

Greetings!
It has been raining….. and raining…… and raining…….and raining…. I could go on and on and on and on and on because it has been raining quite extensively. It seems like it is has been an entire year of rain but maybe not quite - but almost…. there has been lots of rain!
We did have a couple rainless weeks but  they were short and quick and there was actually a day when I think I mistakenly said something like, ‘Wow, my garden needs some rain” and I shouldn’t have said that because the every day rain has begun once again….  that is a lot of weight to carry on my shoulders knowing I caused the raining to begin again.
The rain varies from nuisance rain - you know that rain where it is just raining enough that you can’t really do anything outside and you have to run your windshield wipers on your car but it is not really raining hard enough to be be ‘raining’.  And then there are the raining gully washers where you think that all the rain in the world has settled over top your house and it is all coming down at one time…. The rain where you are sitting on your couch and you look up at the ceiling because it is raining so hard you figure it must be coming through the roof soon!
Now I know rain is necessary and my little garden truly appreciates the rain - but I think that even my little garden is probably complaining in its little garden way that it has plenty of water and would appreciate a few days of sunshine.  
What brought on this diatribe against the rain happened yesterday as I was out running errands and doing work things and picking up some necessary items at the all purpose anything you need store.  It had not rained all day - kind of refreshing - and when it hasn’t rained all day there is a part of you which lives in this hope that the entire day will be rain-free.
But too much optimism…. After I had completed my last stop and I was walking back to my car guess what happened…  these little sprinkles began to fall.  Now in my cup half full dream world I was thinking that this was just an anomaly and that all this moment of rain was going to be - a few minutes of nuisance and then it would be over.  Not to be.
I did make it to my car when I noticed the rain was starting to fall a little bit faster… and then a little faster…. and then a little heavier…. and then a little heavier….. and then a lot faster and then a lost heavier…. until there was one of those gully washer deluge rains where there are just sheets of rain falling on your windshield and I had already committed to driving on the highway - otherwise I would have just remained in my parking spot to endure this bucket emptying water falling on my car.  
So now I am on the highway, rain is falling so hard that with my windshield wipers wiping their little hearts out there is still no vision in front of me except sheets of water cascading down and I am driving down the highway with other cars around me who are in the same predicament….
Which is when I thanked God for taillights on a motor vehicles.  Because even with the veil of flowing water across my front car window, and even with everything else pretty well blocked out, I could see the taillights in front of me - and remarkably I could see stoplights.
However this still required two things - well actually one thing in two different forms - this required me to trust the car  in front of me  with the taillights I could see to be rational and make competent decisions regarding driving in the rain and it required me to trust that cars coming from multiple directions at the stop light locations were also able to see the stop lights and would stop and go accordingly.  
And they did cause I made it home.
Life sometimes feels like we are in a car with water cascading down and creating stressful moments as we don’t know where we are going or where our lives are headed  and we don’t really know who or what to trust as we blindly move along…
Which is why God keeps telling us over and over - ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’.   Remember he doesn’t say, “I will never allow it to rain in your life”, God  just says he will be with us and help us maneuver through the blind spots and the rainy spots and even the rainy years and will always get us where we are suppose to be.  
We just have to trust that…….. and we can without a shadow of a doubt.
Amen!