“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45). At the end of a long and terrifying night of darkness, nothing could be more welcome than the rising of the sun, triumphant and blazing, chasing back the darkness with its piercing rays. After a long hard day, when our car has broken down and no one is around to offer us a ride so that we are forced to walk for miles, nothing could be less welcome than a swift and torrential downpour of rain. On the other hand, after months or years of drought, no sound could be sweeter than the first few plunks of rain striking the cracked and parched earth. There is something so enlivening and invigorating about that first rainfall after a long, long wait. And as we who live in the Valley of the Sun can attest to most ardently, there can definitely be such a thing as too much sunlight. Sometimes God's blessings look like curses. Sometimes our greatest afflictions turn out to be our most cherished blessings. The light of truth can be a lifeline when we are drowning in darkness, or it can shine so intensely on the stark reality of our situation, including the inescapable fact that our catastrophe is largely of our own making, that it strikes us with the force of a physical blow. The rain can be the flood that washes away our house built upon the sand, or the first real kindness that we've had after nearly dying of thirst as we wandered through the dark and dreary wilderness. And sometimes the Lord sends us rain and shine all at once. During our greatest triumphs is often when the devil is permitted the chance to try his best to destroy us. And at the bottom of the deepest pit is often where we learn things about our Savior Jesus Christ, and the infinite power of His grace, that we could have learned in no other way. But even when our cup is running over with more joy and sorrow, more sweetness and bitterness, more sunlight and rain than we have room for or know how to deal with, it is only when we have both the rain and the sun that we get to see the rainbow. As we follow the beautiful arc of light across the sky with our eyes and with our hearts, we are reminded that there will be rain and sun ahead for us all of our days, regardless of how wicked or righteous we are. Sometimes the sunlight will be a blessing unlooked for at the exact moment we needed it most, and sometimes it will hit us with a heat so intense that we almost shut down completely. Sometimes the rain is the very last thing we need and sometimes it is exactly what we need. I hope that rain or shine or beautiful blended rainbow, we will never doubt that our Father loves us and is always sending to us exactly what we need the most.
