So goes a song of the past, but we also remember an old adage hopefully instructing us that April showers bring May flowers.
As April arrives we are certain to have showers befall as we travel life’s road.
It isn’t always a pleasant experience. It utterly messes up our day I remember one severe rainstorm coming home from a long trip from northern Indiana. The rain was so blinding cars were stopping along the highway to wait it out. Yes, storms whether in the physical realm or storms of troubled circumstances can be blinding and troubling to our path. Why then must we have storms? Why can’t life’s experiences be pleasant always? The truth is without the storms of life, we would become terribly spoiled and willful. It’s not always beneficial to constantly have our own way. We dreary at the sight of spoiled children throwing tantrums when they come upon a road block to what they want and cannot have. We also view a dry parched ground, meager crops and lack of water for daily maintenance when rain refuses to fall on our environment.

We are told of a story of the biggest storm of all times. It rained constantly forty days and forty nights. Yes, I’m referring to the story of Noah and the Ark. One day God looked at the world He had created and could find only one family that had not become desperately wicked.(Gen.6:5) He was sorry he had created this world that had turned against Him and decided a cleansing was needed. So He told Noah, to build an Ark, save two of every sort, both male and female and bring them into the ark along his family and food supply.

All wickedness was destroyed from the face of the earth, yes a cleansing took place, but God honored Noah and made a covenant with him because of his obedience and promised to set a bow in the clouds after a storm as a reminder that the earth would never be destroyed again by flood.(Gen. 9:15)

So it is in our life. Storms refine us; they teach us lesson we might not learn otherwise. They are needed to right our path to the light God has for us.

There’s a beautiful rainbow at my window today.

A rainbow of promise for future array.

How brilliant it’s promise as it drops with the dew

To a mountain of stillness of purple and blue..

It’s splendor points to a quiet within

As I yield to the moment that whispers His plan.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew

But to know His will we must listen and do.

Our dreams will be colored with shimmers of light

Which could never be fathomed were we to recite.

And ever so often He reminds me again

By His rainbow of promise, I see now and then. dr