Living in Southern California, you learn to be wary of the rain.
It’s not that the rain is bad – more often than not, we are in desperate need of more precipitation. However, if it rains too hard, for too long, all at once, we quickly have problems. That’s because our cities aren’t built to handle the rain. Mudslides and flooding ensue. What at first seemed like a minor inconvenience, quickly turns into a catastrophe.
The same can happen in our personal lives. The storms seem to build on top of each other and before you know it, the downpour you thought you could handle, spirals out of control. The water floods our lives.
However, as I was recently reminded by a Need to Breathe song, the same water that can cause the floods and mudslides, can wash us. In other words, God often uses the tough times in our lives to purify us, to sanctify us, and to draw us closer to Him. The rain may be overwhelming, but His grace is even more so. And it’s often during the torrent of tears that we experience this most profoundly.
The rain can sweep us away, or the rain can wash us clean. It’s in our response to the bad times that this is determined.
We can choose to let God use the pain, or we can choose to let the pain consume us.
We can choose whether to praise Him through the storm, or oppose Him because of it.
We can choose whether the storm will refine us, or whether the water will drown us.
Our response may not change whether we experience pain, but it will determine whether we draw closer to God as a result of it.
May we increasingly allow the rain to purify us, sanctify us, and make us more like Christ. May we not be awashed in it, but instead, may we be washed by the rain.
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