There is something mesmerizing about watching a summer shower.  As I write this article, one of the “Rainy Season’s” best is blowing past the hospital.  For some reason, I find myself pausing to look at the storm from each hallway window.  I like to look at the wind causing the flags on our mast to stand straight out.  I am fascinated by the bending palm trees.  The gale transforms them into graceful people with their hair dancing in the wind.  The gray of the sky washes over the landscape and the churning ocean on the horizon makes my cup of coffee feel good in my hands – warm and comforting. 

   Actually, I believe my fascination with rainstorms comes from the fact that I am safe inside a solid shelter.  The crash of the thunder would not be nearly as appealing if I were standing in the midst of the torrent, and the lightning might strike fear instead of fascination if I were outside of these walls.  It is the very defiance of the elements that gives me joy and plays into my delusions of omnipotence as I imagine myself able to fend off the forces of the world while the raindrops gently splash against the peeling paint of my window sill.  I enjoy my brief respite from the rain and then move on.

   But what is the lesson that I learn from the storm?  It is simple yet profound.  It is obvious yet meaningful.  The lesson is “Our stormy moments define our sunny days.”  It is only when we, rain soaked and worn, battered and torn, find that somehow we have made it through the bleak and blustery hours of trial that we discover a new appreciation for the warm sunny day.

   My daughter has an appreciation for the sunny day.  She laughs and my day glows most brightly.  I hear her singing in my home and I drift away into the beauty that is her spirit.  She has a fascination for life that is infectious to me.  She carries me along with her joy.  Now my daughter and I both love Winnie the Pooh and all of the characters in the Hundred-Acre Wood.  I because he has a great name and she because he truly is a “loveable old bear.”  The other day she saw a stuffed Eeyore doll in a store and she picked it up and gave it a big hug exclaiming, “I just love this guy!”  And there I saw it, the full beam of sunshine that I know as my daughter juxtaposed against the gray self-defeated lifestyle of a sawdust loser, and I thanked God for my ray of sunshine.

   And isn’t this the message of God’s love for each of us?  That somewhere in the midst of our sometime cloudy days there is sunlight?  That somewhere in the occasional raging storms of life there is a shelter?  That regardless of the situations we face in life, God is always with us, and he often reminds us of his presence with the howling of the gale and the sunshine of a child.  How much sweeter the sunshine after the storm.