Showers of Blessing…..

Monsoon season is all set to start in India and every year around this time, I remember the many monsoons of my childhood…..

Rain was so exciting ….a torrential downpour was a Godsend….it meant no school! I loved sunny days, but I loved rainy days more because they set the mood, mellowed my tomboy spirit and allowed me to dream….of faraway lands and flooded pixie homes!

As the sky turned gray and the rain lashed down unforgiving on a parched earth, I remember clambering up onto the bed, pressing my nose against the window bars, relishing the cold air with its spray of droplets that bounced off our sunshade. I would watch the rain for hours sometimes while my mom boiled or fried (in sand) salted groundnuts for me.

I watched untiringly as the ditches and holes filled up with clear rain water, the open playground near my house flooded and overflowed, plants, flowers and creepers smiled – bright green and fresh, relieved of their dusty coating, umbrellas mushroomed on deserted streets, coconut tree leaves swayed dangerously in cyclonic weather, raindrops glinted on the guavas, oranges and mangoes in our garden and everything acquired a scrubbed and renewed look……even the sky, once the downpour was over. I would only turn away from this fascinating scene when I was certain I had caught a cold!

There wasn’t much I didn’t like about the rainy season (except maybe the yucky worms that seemed to populate the roads the minute it started raining). I loved running barefoot into the puddles once the rain stopped, fishing for tadpoles, picking newly grown mushrooms to paint and decorate the house with (much to my mom’s despair), shaking droplet-laden tree boughs onto unsuspecting friends, breathing in deeply the fresh smell of the earth and even trying to figure out what the frog choir was singing while curled up in bed with an Enid Blyton, a warm blanket and some hot milk! But it was the sky I liked best of all….the sky right after a shower…..so washed out, such a light, powdery blue…..as if a baby angel had spilt water on God's bright-blue oil painting....…..I loved it!

It occurs to me now to thank God for such magical moments, such beautiful memories, apart from the practical and functional aspects of rain….….what would man have been without rain? The word of God says that before the time of Noah, the earth was only watered by springs from below and the inhabitants had no clue what this ‘rain’ was, till one day the heavens opened and the wrath of God came crashing down as mighty sheets of water, destroying the entire world population at one go! How frightening rain must have been to them, cascades of water pouring from the heavens, accompanied by unearthly rumbles of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning ….so fearsome to those seeing it for the first (and the last) time in their lives! I’m so sorry for them…..

But Ezekiel 35:26 says, “I will bless them…..I will send them showers in season; there will be showers of blessing”. Rain is not the only blessing referred to here…..the fruits of the spirit and every spiritual joy is the Lord’s personal shower on souls that seek Him relentlessly. My heart rejoices for the showers of blessings, both of the liquid and the spiritual kind that the Lord God enriched me with all these years….….does yours too?