I saw something today that made the wheels in my head start turning for some strange reason. It was something pretty normal that doesn’t normally stand out in my mind. As I sat in my room in Germany, I was thinking to myself: Wow, today is such a beautiful day. The sun is shining, it’s nice and warm and there is even a cool breeze coming into the room. This is great. I started cleaning my room and as I put the chairs, and so on, outside, I saw that clouds were beginning to come out and the rays of the sun weren’t coming down like they were before and I was a little disappointed. Moments later, it started to rain.
As I rushed to bring everything back inside, I thought to myself: AHHH come on, why did the rain have to come and spoil such a beautiful day? Everything was going fine. I even thought about going into town and just walking around in the sunshine. Now the rain had to come and spoil everything. But to my surprise, within about 15 to maybe 20 minutes, the rain stopped, the clouds began to float away, and the sun started shining again. Now, I live in Berrien Springs, Michigan, where that is a common occurrence. But for some reason, today it was more of a blessing than ever.
I started thinking about how life is so much like the weather. One minute, everything can be great, the sun can be shining, you are happy, you feel like God is blessing like never before and things couldn’t get any better. But from one minute to the next, clouds can start coming in, circumstances just seem to come down like the rain and “spoil” what was such a beautiful day, or even a beautiful life.
My experience today showed me something; that someday, the rain will cease, the clouds will start to disappear, and the sun will shine again. You see, the periods of rain happen for a reason. If it wasn’t for the periods of rain (and pardon my biology), the xylem vessels inside plants would not get the necessary water to transport to the rest of the plant, also the necessary minerals would not be transported adequately, the leaves would start to whither, and without these necessities for life, the plant would die.
So, just as in our life, the rain can appear to hamper the sun. But what we don’t see is what is happening on the inside. On the inside, God has placed some “xylem vessels” that respond to the water in the appropriate manner, building us up, giving us strength, building our characters and making us into what God has for us to be. But through all of this, we must keep in mind that the sun will shine again.
Please allow me to take this analogy a little further. When God created the earth, the animals, birds of the air, fish in the sea, plants, and ultimately human beings, He looked at His creation and said: It is good. The earth was perfect, man was created in the image of God and the “sun” was always shining. It was the “perfect day in my room in Germany”. Eventually sin came into play, and since then it has been raining ever since. But the sun will shine again. The songwriter put it best when he said:
And, Lord, haste the day
when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll:
The trump shall resound
and the Lord shall descend,
“Even so”- it is well with my soul.
Talk about sunshine!!
Father. Husband. Anatomy Professor. Blogger. Changing the world one blog at a time! 