The Rain

I love rain. I love the sound it makes, the way it smells, the change in atmosphere it ushers in as the clouds gather and roll across the sky, announcing the rain’s arrival. I love hot beverages snuggled up on the couch, safely hidden from the force of the rain. It is mesmerising.

For all the good rain can bring – refreshing the world, bringing forth new life, washing the old away – rain can also distort our reality for a little while. I live in an apartment with a gorgeous view of Sydney Harbour. It truly is spectacular. What I find so fascinating about this view is the many, many faces it presents me with every day. It never seems to look the same two days in a row. Somehow, in some way, the natural circumstances which surround this man-made city constantly change the landscape and each day it’s as though I’m viewing the city and harbour fresh again.

The sun brings colour and shades of blue that change each hour of the day. It ushers in beautiful corals and reds in the morning and paints the city in purples and ambers at night. When it rains, however, the city and harbour look very different. The grey of the clouds seems to highlight the grey of the city, the harbour reflects the dreary steal of the sky above and remains so throughout the day. But the most interesting thing is the way the view itself changes when the rain falls.

When the rain rolls through the entire city can disappear. The drops make what was in focus, out of focus and you can begin to wonder if what you saw before the clouds showed up, was actually ever there at all. The perfect, vibrantly coloured view that once laid before you is now covered in grey and you’re left pondering if the clarity you had before is ever going to return.

I find we can often have moments like this in life. Where there once was perfect vision, purpose or direction, now lays hidden by the disillusionment of timing, unmet expectations and uncertainty as to what’s ahead and if it was even there in the first place.

Have you ever felt you were so clear about your path ahead but now find yourself questioning the vision?

You’re asking yourself what is the point? Why did you even set out on this journey in the first place? What purpose does it have? You can’t see where you’re going, you’re not even sure where to step next and everything ahead of you is covered in grey clouds and it’s starting to rain.

Isaiah 42:16 says “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.”

The thing about vision is that our eyes only work when there is light. We rely on the light to see. So even though what’s ahead now seems hidden, dark, uncertain, the light by which we see all things is also present in what we cannot see yet. If light first doesn’t exist in what we do not behold with our eyes, then we simply will be unable to see it at all.

As I stare out over my rainy, clouded view, I have to remind myself that though I can not see it, the view is still there. The city and harbour haven’t disappeared. They’ve just been hidden for awhile. And so it is the same with the vision and calling on my life. Though it may be hidden right now, that which once stood clear as day before me is shrouded in cloud, it doesn’t mean it’s no longer there. The structure is still there, the path, the direction, all of it still exists because light exists within it, even when I can’t see the light in it.

The thing about clouds is that they can shield the light from us, but they cannot extinguish it altogether. Eventually those clouds will be burned up by the sun and revealed before me will be a glorious view once again. And I will appreciate even more because for a time I was without it, but now because of the light, I see it more clearly.