"I HEARD A RAINDROP FALL AND IT REMADE THE DAY"

I'm sitting on my porch listening to the rain.

No symphony orchestra can match its range of sound.

No organ has enough pipes to mimic its magic.

Raindrops dance on the leaves,

- jog on the wood deck,

- dive into the pool of water at the base of the nearby fountain

in the garden,

- prance like elfin horses on the roof of my porch ...

each, a sound all its own -

blending with the rush of water gushing from the house gutters.

Distant thunder accents with timpani.

From the sounds of the falling rain, my mind, intoxicated, composes themes inspired by the scenario.

When God created the world, He made provision for every need, but one of the most creative and imaginative facets was his idea of falling rain.

Earlier today, the sun blazed hot, the air hung with perceived, if not actual, pollution. The ground, thirsting for drink, threw off its outer garments of dust - released when footfalls marked persons passing. The summer sun drank thirstily from every object which had water to give.

Then,

the sun disappeared as clouds were woven by the winds into a gray canopy, graying more deeply as the threads thickened. As if by a signal, each knotted thread, a ringlet of water, slowly began to fall. The air cooled. My skin felt caressed as each nerve reacted to the temperature change.

The colors in my garden deepened. Ferns glistened, rose petals wore earring droplets, and the grass greened as tree boles experimented with darker shades of brown.

It is raining. God is creating the sounds, the score, the scrambled images, but it is my mind, awakened, that is birthing the dialogue.

With the sound of falling rain my cares are shrunken. It is as if the moment were a rebaptism of life and an awakening of forgotten joys. It is a song without words, wonderfully so, for words are limited by their scope of meaning, and they translate feelings into cryptic syllables of thought which dwarf the illimitable range created by the sound of rain.

Rain first fell on Eden.

Rain fell as a houseboat filled with animals rode the crest of a flood that cleansed a world gone wrong.

Rain fell on Golgotha to cool the fevered brow of a dying son.

And,

when the ravages of man's cruelty and greed have wounded and disfigured the beauty of God's creation, rain falls as snowflakes to blanket the ugly and to mold the land with pristine whiteness. From its melting, seeds are swollen and fledging roots are awakened until the beauty of the land is restored.

Rainfall is a part of God's blueprint of creation.

The rain has now stopped.

The sounds have faded.

But, its deed has been done.

My mind has been elevated, my emotions have been played upon like fingers upon a lyre, and suddenly the commonplace has taken on a new beauty. The day has been newly born as a little bit of heaven spilled over as raindrops.

by Rev. J. Vance Eastridge,June, 2000. http://eastridges.com/vance