There have been many times I’ve prayed for rain over hayfields and crops and one time when we had a drought in Texas and had over 100 days of over 100 degrees with no rain, I think people who had never prayed, began praying! It’s easy in those times to be thankful for the rain and to run out and dance in it as it soaks into the ground and cools your skin. You can almost hear the vegetation breathe a sigh of relief.

Lately though, especially where we are now, it rains often, you don’t have to pray for it, you might be more tempted to pray for it to not happen! After the addition of some high-grade titanium to my body, I can usually predict the rain a day before it arrives, even my hip groans, and I’m more likely to be thankful for the massage chair in that moment. We have no lack of rain, and cloudy days, this doesn’t always bode well for my mental health or my attitude, sunshine makes me happy.

The other day as I sat praying on a day it rained from before I got up to long after I had gone to bed, I began really thinking about the difference between sunshine and rain and how without the rain I wouldn’t even know how much I love the sunshine. It took rainy, cold days to teach me gratitude for the warmth of the sunshine warming my skin and seeping into those achy joints.

I realized I was thankful for the rain. This got me to thinking about certain trials and tribulations I have been through and how if I had not experienced them, I wouldn’t be grateful for the deliverance from them or the growth they caused in me. This definitely sounds incredibly like that first chapter of James even though we often don’t always “consider it joy when we encounter trials of many kinds,” but we definitely want the endurance and growth they produce! We can’t have one without the other, but we can have a more grateful attitude when we grow through the trials.

As I sat in the sun that next day soaking it in like a lizard on a fence post, feeling the warmth spread through my body and my mind, I thanked God first for the cold rainy day before, because without it I wouldn’t have appreciated the golden rays painting the ground a soft yellow as they filtered through the leaves and splashed their golden glow all round nearly as much! I wonder how many other things we should stop and meditate on that were tough and uncomfortable, that truly taught us to be grateful for new seasons to come if we untether ourselves from the discomfort and tether ourselves to the growth it will eventually produce.