Happy Little Thoughts

               

There is a refreshing wonder to rain. A pleasant beauty that belongs to rain alone which, I’m certain, is overlooked by some. I know this because there is a beauty that is beheld in snow. I notice it while I’m sitting in a warm apartment, but immediately forget it once I am outside. People laugh at me when I complain about the weather in Missouri and then say I want to live in Washington. “You know, it rains a lot there.” Yeah, I know. 

Setting my argument aside for the sake of my point, rain displays something that no other form of precipitation is able to. It’s this: it washes. 

Rain assists getting some of the muck off of my car. Rain melts away chalk on a driveway. Rain makes mascara run down my cheek. Rain creates rivers in gutters that send debris down the drain. 

Snow, conversely, accumulates. Hail dents my car. Frozen rain creates black ice. Fog blinds drivers. Dew decorates foliage. But rain - rain lets what is underneath show again. 

I just took my dog, Eloise, outside for the last time this evening. They had been forecasting a rainy Monday all week. The weatherman even had the audacity to say there might be some ice mixed in. Anyway, it did not rain at all today. Just some clouds. But when I took Eloise outside, the rain had come. Gently dripping from the clouds. My heart was overjoyed. The drops hit my face and I couldn’t keep from smiling. The rain was here. 

I think about how God washes us so that the person he has created us can be seen again. No matter how much we doubt. No matter how much we try to be in control. No matter how much we ignore. He just wants to make us new. 

He has even said:  

But forget all that—
      it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
 For I am about to do something new.
      See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
   I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
      I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.

                                                             [isaiah 43:18-19, NLT]

Even so, sometimes when God washes us, it requires that we let go of something or someone and that is what makes the washing difficult. We want God to cleanse us, but not without sacrifice. The washing is only complete when we work in tandem with what God wants to do in us. 

It’s like pruning a rose bush. In order for new roses to bloom, the bush must be cut. Likewise, so must we. When we allow God to prune us. To wash us. To make us new. When we surrender to him that which we must let go, he makes us into something new. And when we surrender, we then become consumed in who God is and what he wants to do. And we begin to ask God to wash us, to prune us - we catch the vision of God making himself bigger in us.   

So, to you, be encouraged. 

       

Let yourself be showered in the rain of his love. 

Life is not easy. Being asked to let go often causes us to want to hold on. But when we surrender to our Father, who is nothing but good, we are washed. We are pruned. We are loved. 

Go. Dance in the rain. Be washed. Embrace it. God wants to make you something beautiful.