Forecast: More Rain? Not So Much...

Hello bloggy friends! It’s Monday evening, and I’m looking out my window at a blanket of very white, very fluffy “rain” that fell all afternoon. About an inch or so of it, in fact. It’s beautiful!

Several days ago the weather man warned us that there might be a “big snow” coming our way if two different fronts collided just right. I watched and waited with great anticipation, calculating how it would change my week to have a few snow days thrown in. Then, the closer it got to storm time, the more we heard about things moving off to the east and there not being much in it for us but a few rain showers and a possible flurry or two.

I watched the weather again this morning to hear that our forecast was merely wet and dreary for the next couple of days, and that sadly there wouldn’t be a winter wonderland in store for us at all. Mentally I reset my week back to “normal” mode and packed up Little Man for a trip to the chiropractor and a quick jaunt to the play place at the mall. What else are you going to do on a rainy day, right?

But less than an hour after hearing that disappointing prediction from not one, but two weather sources, the rain drops splattering against my windshield slowly began to turn white and stick in between swipes of the wiper blades. Within minutes flakes as big as grapes were slapping against our windows, and the entire countenance of the day began to change.

The weatherman may have been wrong today about the rain, but I’m glad. We’ve had our fair share of showers lately, and frankly I’m a little over it (I’d never make it in Oregon – sorry, Edward Cullen…). Snow I can handle. There is nothing quite as peaceful to me as a good snow. In fact, one of my favorite sounds in the world is the soft, clean sound of a snowfall (another is the sound of hundreds of people turning pages in their Bibles all at once – completely unrelated to what I’m talking about, but it truly delights my soul!). But rain? I have a hard time with rain. It’s hard for me to get up and get moving on rainy days. I get sad and tired, and I don’t feel like doing much of anything.

The past few weeks it seems like my mind has been stuck in a bit of a rainy day feeling even when the sun has dared to come out of hiding. So when I heard that prediction of even more rain, it kind of made me feel emotionally constrained to all these feelings I’ve been having lately. You know, like the rain might never end and I might never feel like getting up and doing anything. It just seemed like the emotional forecast was going to be just as set as the one for our weather – cold rain and lots of clouds.

But then it started snowing instead, and I learned that not even those who are trained to predict the future can truly ever know what God has in store for us. Sure, it may look by all accounts like it’s going to rain buckets without a flake or sunray in sight. It may even be a meteorological “certainty” according to all the technology and instruments we have in play. But God is God. And nothing is impossible for Him. Nothing! And – I dare say – no one is as delightfully unpredictable as He is!

So, as I’ve sat here writing this (and babbling on about nothing that even remotely makes sense, I’m sure), I’ve taken a pause or two to look out at the Lord’s quiet reminder to me that He alone is God. I’ve even caught the sun shining for a moment, believe it or not. And I’ve stored up in my heart the knowledge that none of us can predict what God has in store for us from one moment to the next. Sure, it may still feel like it’s raining in my heart, but it won’t be like that forever. At some point, when I least expect it, God will send change my way in the unstoppable form of a peaceful snow, or a sun-filled breeze, or even a tornado that brings me perspective. It won’t rain forever. And it certainly won’t rain just because I expect it to.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for being the intimate lover of my soul and the One True God.