Rain and Troubles

We suffered a serious weather condition last night.

I'm used to rain in Old Home: long periods of gray with steady rain, sometimes heavy, sometimes tapering off, but always in an orderly fashion with a known and observable pattern of clouds approaching.

Last night in New Home, we had our first true downpour of the year.

It was awe inspiring. The entire day was clear and hot until about 6:00, when a series of clouds came swooping in: large thunderheads raising their heads high into the evening sky. By 6:30 the rains came.

And came. One minute nothing, the next minute a torrent of rain that obscured the outside from the windows and sent water cascading down the parking lots. It continued, increasing and decreasing in intensity, for over an hour accompanied by thunderous booms and flashes of lightening in the twilight sky.

Within an hour and a half it was gone. As I drove on my street, all I could see was the semi-clearing sky, the wet ground, and curls of steam coming off of the pavement.

The point? I've come to expect problems in my life, both spiritual and otherwise, to be like the rainstorms I'm used to: easy to spot, a known pattern, long but predictable periods of rain in prescribed volumes, and then moving away. What I am finding now - at least in my own spiritual life - is that these troubles do not only come in that fashion: they also come out of a sky that seems largely clear for long periods of time, suddenly pouring down in huge volumes with visible and audible demonstrations - and then vanishing. It's not that they're worse - they're just more intense for shorter periods of time. Something to bear in mind during this point of spiritual dryness.

A lesson on spiritual drought through a downpour: what an odd thing.