April showers bring May flowers.
This expression is either really true, a nice way of hushing us all up from complaining about the typical dreariness before spring's loveliness, or a little of both.
Regardless, if April showers truly do bring May flowers, what kind of botanical beauty must severe weather produce? Let's hope it brings tourist-worthy blooms that will knock the lenses off our phones and put Instagram's filters to shame, particularly since this April's "showers" ripped many Southern towns to shreds and will require repair work for months and years to come.
And, of course, I'm just referring the
literal showers.
Lord knows we all have inner storms that even Jim Cantore's team couldn't predict or show up for -- the ones that sneak up on lovely dwelling places we keep so tidy and call home, barreling through our peace of mind and quiet hearts, tempting us to run for the hills and forget everything we've ever experienced about knowing the knowing God when we are still.
When any kind of shower, brutal or light, rips through our world and turns smiles to frowns, it's kind of hard to keep a Pollyanna-esque outlook. When it comes down to it, flowers are pretty, and some color is always nice, but how many meals can you make from them? Has anyone written a check with a bouquet of roses?
Not to mix cliches and the Bible, but in stormy times like these, I try to remember Scriptures referencing how much God cares for seemingly tiny and almost insignificant creatures like sparrows:
"Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" Matthew 6:26 (English Standard Version)
I do think when it comes to "small" things in life, like flowers vs. flooding and birds vs. bills getting paid, maybe those old adages and forever applicable Scriptures are pointing to the same eternal truth: if our omniscient Creator attends to these details, He probably won't let his perfect creations flail because of circumstances like storms, literal or figurative.
Not that those affirmations are helpful when we're in the bathtub fully clothed as we hear the winds howl overhead, or when we're wondering why yet another piece of our life is flopping around as though we've poisoned it when we're clearly making efforts to do the right thing, but maybe, once the twister dies down and the debris settles and the sun comes back out, we can remember what's good and true and right: our God is bigger than these storms, and He doesn't withhold the beauty of the flowers afterwards.
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