Thoughts on a Rainy Tuesday

Because I have to bring my oldest son to catch a bus to school, I find myself with a precious small amount of time in the mornings, before the day starts, to spend some quiet time with the Lord.  I was given ages ago a four volume set of Breviaries, which I only recently learned how to use, and I have been using this morning time to do the Office of Readings before the day begins.

This day, from the beginning, the rain was difficult to ignore. Each day before today I woke up to stunning sunshine. It pierced the clouds and clothed the world in its beauty and I, a self-professed non-morning person, conceded that indeed mornings are quite beautiful.  This morning, however, the darkness still lingers.  Rain drops fall to the earth and it’s a bit harder to get going.

As a general rule, most people don’t like the rain.  We all see it as necessary, vital to life. But the rain generally means a bad weather day. We stay in, things get wet and kind of gloomy.  A favorite song of mine says, “I can’t stop the rain, but I will hold you till it goes away.” We understand that we need rain, but we’re all just waiting for it to go away.

So the readings from this morning touched me immediately:

“You poured down, O God, a generous rain:
When your people were starved you gave them new life.
It was there that your people found a home,
Prepared in your goodness, O God, for the poor.”

Immediately I felt the Lord speaking into my life.  My life, full of chaos, of craziness, of things I lament and can’t avoid; necessary, but that I wish would pass.  Rain.  The psalmist calls this rain “generous”, and says that I will find a home here.  Can it really be?  Can I really be at home in this circumstance?

Most people don’t like the rain, but not all. Some actually love it.  Some go outside and allow it to drench them, and receive joy from the refreshing drops that fall from the sky.  Bring a baby outside in the rain for the first time and you will see pure delight at this amazing phenomenon, a new way of being that is not intuitive to we who have lived with rain for a long time.  Rain is not just good on a symbolic level for what it accomplishes, it is beautiful in and of itself. It is we who need to change our perspective.

The second reading of todays office comes from St. Bernard who writes,

“Hear also the prophet Habakkuk.  Far from hiding from the Lord’s reprimands, he dwells on them with attentive and anxious care.  He says: I will stand upon my watchtower and take up my post on the ramparts, keeping watch to see what he will say to me and what answer I will make to those who try to confute me. I beg you, my brothers, stand upon our watchtower, for now is the time for battle.  Let all our dealings be in the heart, where Christ dwells, in right judgment and wise counsel, but in such a way as to place no confidence in those dealings, nor rely upon our fragile defenses.”

There are those who tolerate the rain.  Who understand its goodness and redemptive power for life, but suffer through it, waiting for it to pass. And there are those who run full on into it, make their home there, and allow it to fill them in the moment because of its beauty.  They build themselves a watchtower and live the gift of the now, trusting not in their own efforts or defenses but in the goodness and generosity of a God who loves them so much that He wills this rain for their goodness, out of His own generosity.

Today, I pray for the grace to see the beauty in the rain.  To not look beyond but instead to live here, like a child.  Full of wonder for the gift of this moment, the miracle of God’s goodness, and the unexpected beauty of the most seemingly gloomy things. Not the absence of sunshine, but the beautiful, redemptive, cleansing gift of rain.