Rain Song

“What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,

or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm,

to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew?”

(Job 38:24-28)

Same storm, downtown. By L. Anderson.

I set out to get caught in the rain tonight. In truth, the Lord took me on an adventure. Just as the sun was setting.

I had run up to the little lighthouse and was coming back in failing light. A west wind which spoke of storm was rising up; falling leaves already turning for fall raced from their dusky heights. The Greenway dampened in the warm, wet air. My heart thrilled.

I watched enthralled as the wind whipped Hudson waves into the breakwaters, hypnotized as those boiling stony-faced thunderheads rolled in. The sky above the Jersey coast sparkled with distant lightning, each bolt a bold new stroke by the master of creation. The thousand orange eyes of the George Washington Bridge kept guard with anticipation. The near horizon gleamed again and I picked up speed. Now it was a race of the best kind, when losing is winning.

A flock of Canada geese bobbled on the water just off shore near the overhang I had nearly reached when the first raindrops anointed my head. Then, suspended in dark showers on the pedestrian bridge over Metro North. Then, the long climb of 155^th to the tune of God’s Boléro: a steady percussion of rain and the sense of something big building, slowly, savory. Then,

Downpour. A roaring applause of pavement meeting sky.

And I am washed by rain poured over me by the gracious hand of my Lord and King; He has assigned me my portion and my cup. He reminds me I am clean, and more—He satisfies my heart’s longing for adventure. And so I sit here listening to another Boléro and the thunder breaking and write this rain song to the Lord.

“Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup;

you have made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

(Psalm 16:5-6)