Rain Delay

Rain slowed the traffic, schedules and the day itself. And that didn’t feel like a problem.

My windshield wipers settled into a steady rhythm yesterday, pushing the rain from my windshield. Dark clouds, swollen with even more rain, drifted overhead as I drove from my doctor’s office to my pharmacy.

The midday traffic crept along at a slower than usual pace. And that felt … right.

Once I pulled up to the pharmacy, people hunkered under umbrellas and scurried inside, avoiding puddles that they probably would’ve stomped in when they were a kid.

Earlier in the day, my 90-year-old mother canceled her doctor’s appointment due to the rainstorm. I had an appointment with the same doctor that day and she totally understood why Mom didn’t want to get out in the weather. Our doctor is sympathetic to how difficult it is for Mom to go up and down steps at the apartment complex, so she scheduled her for a telehealth appointment one day next week.

In one of Luke Bryan’s songs, he says rain is a good thing. And I agree. It’s not only good but it’s also necessary.

As an observer of people, I notice how weather affects people. And on this particular rainy day, everything felt slower, safer, more protected.

Rain nudges people to move more carefully and take fewer risks. It keeps some people home, settled in front of their televisions or dinner tables. And it settles the dust. What feels like an inconvenience is actually a covering.

Ezekiel 34:26–27 (ESV) offers a soothing thought about rain, wrapped in a covenant God made with his people: “And I will make them and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land. And they shall know that I am the Lord . . .”

Sometimes, we resist the slower pace, even when it’s the very thing that brings blessing or keeps us safe.

P. S. I loved author Kathy Nickerson’s perspective about rain in her article One Thing about Rain in which she looked at it from varying perspectives. Definitely worth a read. Subscribe to her content while you are there.