Driving home from the airport after returning from the She Speaks conference two summers ago, I ran into another rain storm. As I pulled onto the Interstate the dark clouds began to darken the sky, but I was hoping for a light shower and I would be able to get home quickly to my family I had been missing since I left four days earlier.
As I was pulling onto the Interstate it started raining. It began slowly, but then it changed into rain so thick I could barely see. My windshield wipers could not push the rain away fast enough, the defrost was not helping. The rain was so heavy I could not even see the hood of my car. For some reason, it did not seem to bother the other drivers the way it was me. They were speeding on past as if it was just a little rain shower on a summer afternoon. They were going along fine; I almost wrecked. My tires were hydroplaning; they were going the speed limit.
I decided to stop and pull off at a Waffle House and call my husband and tell him about the rain and that I would be a little later than I had expected. I wanted to race on home to see him and my son, but the downpour was impassable at the moment, at least for me, and I had to stop until it let up and I could see clearly to drive the rest of the way home.
Just like that rainstorm on that summer evening, life can throw us some rainstorms as well. We can be driving along and everything seems to be going good and all of a sudden you get caught in a downpour that seems impassable; the rain is so heavy you can not see right in front of you. Others seem to be living their lives as if nothing is happening, going along on their way, while you can't see to take your next step.
A loved one dies
A job loss
A marriage ending
A diagnosis
A miscarriage
A realization of the sin in your life and need for Jesus
A change of church homes
Others decisions that affect your life
The loss of a ministry or a closed door
Rainstorms so heavy they force us to pull off the road of life and stop.
Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest,
"In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. They are a sign that God is there. ...God cannot come near us without clouds."
While sitting in my car waiting to get back on the road and home to my family, I looked up at the sky and through the rain you could still see the sun shining. Even through all the rain, the sun was still there shining.
Just like the sun was still there that Sunday afternoon, The Son is there in the midst of life's rainstorms. Jesus promises that He will never leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6).
When the rain eased up enough I could see, I pulled back on the road and before I knew it the rain had stopped and the sun was shining bright. I looked in my rear view mirror and there was a huge rainbow in the sky, God's promise that He was with me. When we pull back onto life's road it might not always be easy. When I got back on the road that afternoon it was still raining, but I decided I needed to get through the storm so I could be with my family I had not seen in four days. We have to take the time to pull over in those storms of life, but there comes a time we need to get back on the road. Through the clouds the SON is still there and just a little ways up the road you will look back and see the symbol of God's beauty, His rainbow. On this side of heaven we may never understand some of the rainstorms that come into our lives, but we can know that Jesus is in them with us.
Living Free,
Brandee
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