Beauty in Rain

It was cloudy most of the day, and this evening it finally rained.
The clouds sort of matched my evening, if you know what I mean.  I was getting dinner ready much later than I wanted to, and generally fighting off a feeling of discouragement.  As I walked through my dining room to get something, the glistening sidewalks and street caught my eye.

Then I looked up.
It was still raining, but the sky was so lovely I had to pause in my cooking to go outside and appreciate it.

The sun was setting, but the sky was blue and beautiful.  I loved seeing a few clouds that still glistened with the last light of the sun.

If the sky is the daily bread of the eyes, then I needed beauty more than food tonight to feel better.

I stood there, breathing deeply the smells of falling rain as I marveled, once again, at the beauty of the sky.

I was reminded of a favorite passage in the book Crow and Weasel, by Barry Lopez.

Grizzly Bear has helped Crow and Weasel, who were starving, and together they are enjoying the sunset.
“Sometimes it is what is beautiful that carries you,” said Weasel weakly from his bed.
“Yes.  It can carry you to the end.  It is your relationship to what is beautiful, not the beautiful thing by itself, that carries you,” said Grizzly Bear.

Tonight I gave thanks for the gift of a beautiful sky as it rained.  It carried me through a difficult moment.
I am grateful for a loving God who places many simple gifts of beauty in our paths to carry us, if we will just see them, through the rainy times in life.