Not Listening to the Rain.

I was driving home from some friends’ last night and it was raining. Raining loud and long and the wind was blowing and it was the kind of rain we get here in the summer, not necessarily the kind we get in February. My windshield wipers were going full blast almost the whole hour-long drive.

Not being one who is afraid to drive in inclement weather I was just toodling along when, with only about 15 minutes left of my journey I realized that I hadn’t heard the rain at all. Not on the whole journey. There was no pitter-patter that reached my ears.

Now this is not natural. After all, I was in a car made out of metal with a windshield made of glass and USUALLY you hear the rain, especially if it is this heavy rain, which it was.

“How odd,” I thought.

But then I realized why I hadn’t heard the rain and I put two-and-two together.

I had my music on really loud.

Which is a firm belief of mine: the only way to listen to music in a car is loudly. If other people are with you and they are the kind of people you can’t sit in silence with yet, or the kind you can’t interrupt when you are jarred from your conversation by a fabulous song that just came on, then music shouldn’t be on at all. I am not for this quiet, in the background kind in cars.

Nope.

It’s loud. Or it’s off.

Needless to say, I was alone in the car.

So I guess you could say it was loud.

And what was I listening to? A very dear friend of mine gave me this worship mix-cd a couple years ago and I have loved it since. It categorized a time in my life when things were coming to completion and the excitement of something new lingered in the air. How appropriate for my life right now.

And it was blaring.

So there I was driving, my eardrums being filled with all of these grand words about how God is our defender, and he has love like a hurricane, and questions about whether our end will be beautiful or not, and how we need to be led to the cross.

Those were words that were blaring so loudly.

Good words.

Impactful words.

And I had to stop and think (not literally stop, mind you. I just kept toodling along in the pouring rain). “How many times in life could I have avoided the sound of the pouring rain if I had filled my mouth and my ears with words like ‘Hosanna in the highest’?”

Does that make sense?

Sometimes in life we come to these spots where it’s not really a storm, but it sure is raining. Do you know what I mean? And I have a tendency to grumble about the wet or curse that I didn’t put my rain boots on; hate that I hadn’t prepared myself or that I didn’t handle the situation right.

Rather than hearing the rain and loathing of life and then grumbling about it, what if I had said in the face of adversity, “God has a plan.” Over and over again, “God has a plan. And he has got love like a hurricane.” Would I maybe not have heard the rain so much? Would I not have after-thought feelings of, “Gee, I wish I would have had my raincoat on. I wish I would have braved that better”?

There is a story in Mark 7 where Jesus heals a deaf and mute man. I have always found it so fascinating that the first thing Jesus does is takes the man away from the crowd and puts his fingers in his ears. I know that this man couldn’t hear and Jesus probably did that just so the man’s ears would be opened, but do you ever wish he would do that for you? Take you aside and block out all other noises so that all you hear is him. This man was going to be in for a rude awakening when his hearing returned: he would now know what it was like to hear all things, even the things not good.

Even the rain.

I guess what I am getting at is maybe if my mouth was full of claiming truth, claiming the promises of God, saying over and over again, “God has a plan,” and believing it, maybe I wouldn’t hear myself grumbling so much. Maybe I wouldn’t have found myself caught out in the rain.