Another sunny day here in Chicagoland. Say what you want about San Diego, this place is sunny all the damn time! At least it seems that way to me. Moving from the lee coast of Lake Michigan to the windward side some years ago came as a bit of a shock.
Less cloud cover, less precipitation, that “sickly orange barf-glow” (thank you Lisa Simpson) in the night sky obscuring the stars. Well my nice green lawn is going brown. The wild riot of color from the flowerbeds has turned to a drab, drooping, bleh!
And while I’m ranting, what’s all this nonsense I keep hearing about brutal Chicago winters? Yeah, the people who say that have never lived in Michigan. Ask someone from Minnesota what they think about “brutal Chicago winters.” They’ll laugh in your face. We had a blizzard the winter before last. Closed the city. Cars and buses stranded on Lake Shore Drive. We got two whole feet of snow! C’mon! They get 2 feet of snow twice a week in Grand Rapids in the winter.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, sunshine…
The title of this post is supposed to be some old Bedouin proverb. The meaning is obvious. There are many such pithy sayings:
Into every life a little rain must fall…
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…
Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game…
Wait a minute…that last one’s a song. Never mind. Anyway, you get the picture.
Enjoy the good times while they last, but don’t be upset when the storms come, because they will. Big ones, little ones, illness, financial troubles, work troubles, family feuds, political corruption, unrequited love, broken marriages, addictions, plague, famine, zombie outbreak, loss of faith, loss of hope. But the storms can do you good. It’s all in how you approach them, and what you do with them.
If you approach them as the inevitable trials of this life, and remember that they will pass, you will maintain your peace. Take the punch and move on. Then a funny thing happens: you get stronger, not weaker. It gets easier to remember that there is nothing that can happen to you in this life outside the providence God and He is on your side. Paraphrasing Romans 8:28, He will make all things work together for your good. Don’t try to figure it out (see Job); don’t try to understand all the time. Just endure and know that “…He who promised is faithful”[1]
Sing us out Bobby…
[1] Hebrews 10:23b
