Lord, teach us to dance in the rain as You cover us with Your umbrella of love.
You’re kneeling in your rose garden relishing in its fragrance and beauty. You reach for a rose and suddenly you are pricked by its thorns. Blood leaks from your fingertips and you shriek from the pain. You question the reason for the thorns. Why can’t there be roses without thorns? Sunny days without rain? Joy without pain? Happy without sad? Good without bad? Balance in a heavenly place.
Well, this was the case once upon a time, in the Garden of Eden, and it will be again in heaven. But between now and then, we have life. Our earthly lives are much more challenging than our heavenly ones. We must allow God to grow us through life on earth. We need to endure the rainy seasons in our lives, and we need to embrace our storms. Life and growth take time, and we are strengthened and made stronger through our storms.
We are made better through the healing of our brokenness. We become holier and grow closer to God. We must first become whole and righteous. We must be saved first from our brokenness by Jesus, who ensures that we do not enter the kingdom of God broken. The process of becoming whole often hurts us before it heals us. Through our pain, we are saved and transformed. We must learn to dance in the rain as we wait for the roses God is cultivating in our hearts to bloom. We must learn to endure the thorns that are there to sustain and protect us. Pain guards our hearts. We need to trust and have faith in God, especially when life hurts.
I’m so glad you’re reading this book because it means you have faith. Faith that things can get better. Hard times are only temporary and necessary for growth. My hope is that this book will help you to believe in God’s desire to cover you like an umbrella and protect you from the sorrows that may be raining down upon you right now. God can calm the storm that surrounds you and replace it with the sweet scent of roses sent straight from heaven to flood your world with joy.
Perhaps you’re not going through any difficulty at this moment but still recovering from a previous pain. Or maybe you’re needing some courage to fight the encroaching storms in your forecast. Regardless of your circumstances, and whatever pain is clouding your happiness today, please know that your sun will shine again. God gave us a rainbow as a covenant to remind us of this promise. That’s not to say it will never rain again but that it will never get to the point of flooding before the sun once again fills your days with light. The rainbow is a reminder that the rain will stop eventually.
Sometimes you need something to hang onto while you ride out the storm. It’s easier to endure the rain when you have an umbrella. And it’s easier to tackle life when you’re with God and His Word. May God be your umbrella when you’re needing shelter from a storm, and may you hang on to Him with all your might as he shields you from the elements of this world.
My hope is that these words, along with God’s grace, will give you comfort and strength to endure the storms of this world fearlessly. Be not afraid, for fear in all actuality is only false evidence appearing real. When we are afraid, we are actually saying that we doubt God’s power and ability to handle every situation. Fear not; He is with you.
The world’s challenges may be obstructing any rays of sunshine from sprinkling down upon you at this time, and clouds may be blocking you from seeing the vibrant rainbow strokes that are vigorously trying to paint your darkened sky. Or perhaps the endless beating rain has created hyposmia (yes, it’s a word and you can Google it) and left you unable to smell the rose fragrance that lines your journey’s path. But (and there is always a but) the fact that you picked up this book and looked inside tells me that you believe there is hope, and with the help of God, you will see the light again.
I wrote this book to show you how to reach for God as your umbrella and to remind you to carry Him with you through the rainy seasons of your life. Walk hand in hand with God and soon, instead of raindrops, you will collect the roses that are growing abundantly all around you. May those roses begin to fill your heart with the beautiful fragrance of life as your pain begins to dissipate and you learn to dance in the rain.
Now I feel obligated to let you in on a little secret. You don’t need this book (even though I’m happy you’re reading it). The fact is you already contain everything you need to get through life’s storms. You also hold the power to create the life God has intended for you to have. My goal is to help you see for yourself that through the Spirit within your heart, you can face any storm without fear, knowing with a sense of peace that God is with you every step of the way. He wants to shelter you like an umbrella if you would only choose to take Him along. We often leave the house forgetting or choosing not to bring our umbrella with us. The storm hits and we suffer. Much in the same way, we forget or choose not to bring God along with us throughout our days. May God be with us every day and every minute, whether we’re basking in the sun, learning to dance in the rain, or enjoying the sweet scent of roses from heaven.