Skip to main content

After The Rain

Image
By

I slept all night, woke to the alarm on my cell phone, and jumped out of bed. I love sleeping all night, which I rarely do. All my aging friends say the same thing—it’s not typical—sleeping straight through the night is not typical. I looked out the double windows over my kitchen sink, past the lanai to the lake beyond, which, thanks to the summer rains, is now full to the brim. 

“I love a rainy day”— Sounds like a song! 

More rain blew through the palm trees and across the lake causing the water to ripple. I turned the coffee pot on and perched upon the stool at my kitchen bar to read some chapters, the last few Psalms before Chapter 119. I would save 119 until tomorrow, such a long, long chapter. By the time I showered and dressed, the rain had stopped and part of the southern sky was clearing. A low mist hung mysteriously over the lake, just a little something extra God uses to add to the beauty After the Rain.

I drove to the coffee shop, as usual, and when I turned the corner out of Longleaf onto Highway 54 due west, I saw it—the two ends of a rainbow with clouds covering the center. The entire rainbow was out there somewhere beyond the clouds for someone else to enjoy.

I was thanking the Lord for the beauty of the earth and started to sing out loud, “God put a rainbow in the sky … when it looked like the sun wouldn’t shine anymore … God put a rainbow in the sky.”

Being perfectly honest, did you ever have an experience like that?—when you thought the sun wouldn’t shine anymore? Some days are undeniably dark and dreary. There’s always something to stew over if we’re looking for it. But then ...  the clouds lift and the rainbow fans beautiful hues across a partly sunny sky. God's promise with the first rainbow ever always comes shining through the clouds, letting us know in no uncertain terms, He is still alive and well on Planet Earth, which He made with His own hands. Make no mistake, He neither sleeps nor slumbers and He knows exactly what's going on out there in a world that has blatantly and specifically denounced Him as Creator God.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
from whence cometh my help. 
My help cometh from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: 
he that keepth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper:
The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil:
he shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out
and thy coming in
from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Psalm 121








Jane Bennett Gaddy, Ph.D.
Trinity, FLA


Jane's Books


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It was Over... The South Was Defeated

By
Isaac Payne rode with the last of his company to Appomattox on April 10 with no inkling of what to expect. He waited outside the perimeter. Enlisted men were not allowed to be present on the streets of the Courthouse area. Only commanding officers. Isaac was emaciated, just like all the other southern patriots who leaned hard against the white picket fence that surrounded the township. Tired, empty, and disheartened, they waited to know the end of the story. One man could scarcely be identified from the next. They all looked the same. Withered and wasted. Isaac dismounted and patted Glory. She was his only earthly possession besides his weapons. His only connection to home. He gripped the bridle and pressed his face to her thin neck, unconsciously rubbing his hand over her protruding bones. If he looked up in the distance he might see his father and brother riding the dusty road to Appomattox to join him, but how could that be? They were dead. The thought of their absence and ...
5 comments
Read more

On The Cusp—

By
John 14:6 I am the way … Jesus sat with his disciples, giving them the most pleasant of instructions—instructions that concerned the state of the heart, though the human heart, apart from Christ, cannot be trusted.  Jeremiah described it as “… deceitful above all things and desperately wicked …” (17:9). But Jesus told the disciples in John 14:1: “Let not your heart be troubled …” He had spent the better part of three years with these men, and for some reason when He began that day to linger on going away and heaven and things prepared, Thomas just didn’t get it. He doubted and wondered and pondered and questioned:              “How will we get to the Father’s House?” and              “How on earth are we going to know the way?”             Imagine being there yourself as Jesus arrested thoughts...
3 comments
Read more

Once for All

By
I was just thinking… If we say that salvation is progressive— I loathe the word progressive these days—and that there is not that moment when we are set free from the law of sin and death, then we obviously are still under the law, trying by our own feeble efforts to save ourselves. How debilitating. Besides, that’s not going to happen. We don’t have what it takes. Or maybe we’re waiting for God to perform some random act of kindness toward us that will take us out of the misery of not knowing whether we’re saved or not, because it is a progressive thing, and if it is a progressive thing, then whenever will God do whatever it is He wants to do to make  it happen? See how outrageous it sounds? There is an answer, you know. Romans 8:2 says, “For the law of the Spirit of life In Christ Jesus hath made me FREE from the law of sin and death.” We never had to work for it in the first place. The freedom Christ gives is—let’s see— FREE ! Paid for i...
2 comments
Read more