You Need the Sunshine AND the Rain

You know that awkward time of year when it’s not winter anymore but it’s not quite spring yet? When everything has that gray and brown look to it? You look around and wish the buds would just hurry up and appear on the trees and the grass would return to the glory of a bright summertime green.

You get one beautiful day of sunshine followed by cold, gloomy rain showers for the next five. It’s frustrating and you may start wishing and hoping spring would just get here already and soon find yourself skipping straight to dreams of summer bliss.

I was on a run the other day (the one beautiful day we had amidst the multiple days of cold and rain) and I felt Spring in the air as the sun warmed my skin and a chorus of various bird chirps filled the silence. Spring is associated with new life, growth, and awakening as the earth stretches out after a long winter. As I was taking in my surroundings, so thankful to be outside and enjoying the beautiful weather, my eyes looked around and saw the dry brown grass and the bare trees. The muck and build up of dirt and gravel was no longer hidden by a white blanket of snow – everything was looking pretty rough.

In that moment, the Lord reminded me of such a simple, but profound truth.

As much as I want endless days of glorious sunshine like that one, I also know the life and beauty in the rain – even a cold spring rain. The brown cannot become green by the touch of sun alone, it’s also going to take the dreary gloom of some rain for refreshment and growth to come.

It’s the same with us.

The beautiful moments of celebration and provision along with the hard moments of struggle and pain are what cause us to grow – we need both.

They go hand in hand.

I know for me in certain moments when God has blown me away with His provision – funding my year-long mission trip, or another big girl job, or someone paying for my coffee in the drive-thru on a day I really needed some extra energy – my faith is deepened and strengthened. My heart bursts with joy and thankfulness as I sit in wonder at how the Almighty God of the universe loves me. How He remembers little old me in the big and small moments. In those moments it is easy look up and feel the warmth of His love, like when you feel the sun on your face on a beautiful cloudless day. And how marvelous it is.

Then there are the hard moments. The moments in life when you have an awful stressful day from the second you walk out the door to the minute you get home. The moments when grief and pain strike in unexpected illness or death. Moments when fear and anxiety feel like they control your every thought and every action. During my parents’ divorce when all forms of hell broke loose in my family. The lonely nights when I truly believed I was the most worthless piece of nothing that ever existed. When fear gripped me and had me wrapped around its little finger – fear of not being good enough, fear of being forgotten, fear of being alone, fear of failure.

It was in these moments when pain and struggle had me defeated and revealed just how weak I was, “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Those moments, albeit some of the darkest and most difficult moments of my life, were when I finally realized that I cannot do it all. I cannot handle all this life will throw at me on my own power, determination, or strength. They helped me learn to depend on the One who will never fail, the One who is the strength of my heart and my portion forever – God my Father. It’s been quite the road through the darkness and the pain to come to this place of dependence, but I don’t know that I would have gotten here by any other road.

You see, the Father is in every part of your life – every action, every thought, every breath. He speaks to you in all of life’s moments – not just in the good times; His ears are always listening – not just in the bad times.

It’s easy to wish away the pain and sorrow and pray for relief – but what is the Father cultivating in you through the cold rain of struggle? It’s also easy to praise and leap for joy in the moments of provision and blessing – but if that’s how life was ALL the time, would your joy and thankfulness still be as true and genuine? Would you get used to it and take it for granted?

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8

We don’t know what the Father is working out in all the details of our lives – from the day to day to the big turning points. But do you trust the One who always brings Spring after the Winter, time and time again? Do you trust the One who is making all things new?

“…that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Phillippians 1:6

You’re going to have beautiful days of sunshine – of celebration and joy in this life.

But you’re also going to experience the cold days of rain – of trial and persecution as well.

You need both to grow. With only sunshine, we will dry up and fade. With only rain, we will drown and be washed away.

With both sunshine and rain, with good and hard times, we flourish, green and strong, reaching toward Heaven.