Raining Blessings

Water will gush forth in the wilderness...

I know I said I wasn't going to write this week, but I wanted to thank you for your thoughts, your condolences, and your prayers. I have been overwhelmed by your kindness. I have had a tremendous amount of peace these past couple of days, and I've been sleeping very well the past two nights. What a relief that is after so many weeks of very little sleep.

...and streams in the desert.

Before I close, I wanted to share an interesting way that God has comforted me today. Yesterday, my friend Karla posted a song on my Facebook wall yesterday called "Blessings." I listened to it several times, as it was a great comfort to me. Imagine my surprise this morning when I read today's devotional in Streams in the Desert:

"A poet stands by the window watching a summer shower. It is a fierce downpour, beating and pounding the earth. But the poet, in his mind's eye, sees more than a rain shower falling. He sees a myriad of lovely flowers raining down, soon breaking forth from the freshly watered earth, and filling it with their matchless beauty and fragrance. And so he sings:

The burning sand will become a pool,

It isn't raining rain to me--it's raining daffodils

In every dripping drop I see wildflowers upon the hills.

A cloud of gray engulfs the day,

and overwhelms the town;

It isn't raining rain to me--it's raining roses down.

"Perhaps you are undergoing some trial as God's child, and you are saying to Him, 'O God, it is raining very hard on me tonight, and this test seems beyond my power to endure. Disappointments are pouring in, washing away and utterly defeating my chosen plans. My trembling heart is grieved and is cowering at the intensity of my suffering. Surely the rains of affliction are beating down upon my soul.'

...the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

"Dear friend, you are completely mistaken. God is not raining rain on you--He is raining blessings. If you will only believe your Father's Word, you will realize that springing up beneath the pounding rain are spiritual flowers. And they are more beautiful and fragrant than those that ever grew before in your stormless and suffering-free life.

In the haunts where jackals once lay...

"You can see the rain, but can you also see the flowers? You are suffering through these tests, but know that God sees sweet flowers of faith springing up in your life beneath these very trials. You try to escape the pain, yet God sees tender compassion for other sufferers finding birth in your soul. Your heart winces at the pain of heavy grief, but God sees the sorrow deepening and enriching your life.

...grass and reeds and papyrus will grow (Isaiah 35:6b-7).

"No, my friend, it is not raining afflictions on you. It is raining tenderness, love, compassion, patience, and a thousand other flowers and fruits of the blessed Holy Spirit. And they are bringing to your life spiritual enrichment that all the prosperity and ease of this world could never produce in your inmost being."

I hope that you have already made it to the other side of your valley of trials, but if you haven't, I hope this devotional soothes your soul as it did mine today.

~Angela