I walked through the computer lab today. The rain was falling outside and none of the students even looked. Not one of them was even distracted by the little droplets beading up on the windows or dripping off the leaves of the trees in the courtyard and soaking into the grey, weathered wood of the picnic tables. My students are all too easily distracted, but not by the wind and the rain. It means that rain, here in the American mid-west, is ordinary; if anything it’s a little annoying. The wonder of it is lost.
I saw so little of it in the Emirates. There, the falling of rain, even just a few drops for a moment in an afternoon in the summer, was a source of excitement to everyone. Though there was plenty of desalinated water to drink, somehow I was always thirsty in a way that only a real honest to goodness rain could slake. And the most satisfying rain of all is the great Corn Belt thunderstorm, where the rain just pours and pours in response to the pounding of thunder.
“The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”
I now know it is wrong to think of the rain as a bad thing. Now I see that it is improper to see this passage as a negative: as if rain, representing misfortune in life, is something that comes to us randomly, and has nothing to do with whether someone is living righteously before God.
Now I understand that the rain is always a blessing from God. It falls on everyone. What is different is whether people curse the blessing or see the miracle.
2 comments:
Exaaaactly! ; ) I like the rain too. But ask me again in a few months when I'm drowning in it! ; )
I love this entry.
I am friends with a fantastic Egyptian family, and have stayed at their house in Cairo several times. I was visiting one summer when the mother and father returned from their vacation in Toronto, Canada.
The father excitedly chattered about his trip to Niagara falls, how he stood on the deck of the boat in heavy rain-gear and watched more water than he'd ever seen in his life pour over the falls. He loved it.
He loved it so much, the next day he returned to the boating company and asked if it was really necessary to wear the rain gear. The company told him it was for his convenience. So he took the tour again, this time in his boxer shorts, undershirt and flip flops.
He stood amongst the bright yellow slickers on the bow of the ship, arms outstretched and taking in the full force of the wind and mist. (As his wife stood firmly on shore, embarrassed of her husband's behavior.) In his words, "It was paradise!"
Sometimes, it's just a matter of perspective.
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