The Rain, Rain, Rain Came Down. . .

The first drop hit me on the nose.

The moisture surprised me, since I stood in my kitchen watching the storm outside my window mount in its intensity. I raised my gaze to the ceiling and there, in an almost imperceptible crack near the light fixture, another drop oozed its way through.

Great.

The roofer explained that the pitch of our garage roof met that of the main house in a valley which sat directly above the light fixture in my kitchen. Probably sometime earlier, on his way to sweep the roof, my devoted husband planted his number ten shoe in the weak joint. The shingles moved and the leak began.

 But the roof was twenty years old. Shouldn’t we replace it?

They didn’t knock when they arrived, but the scritching noise of their shoes on the top of my house told me they were there, as though hundred-pound termites had moved in and were eating their way to the interior below. When the pallets of shingles were moved and dropped in various places, the entire house shook. Pictures fell off the walls. I know the work is tough and the materials heavy, but really!

Recovering a house’s top in March in the Northwest is like playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun. Our contractor waited for a sunny forecast where two days of sun promised to show together and then stripped away only as much of the old cover as he could safely re-shingle in that amount of time. He’d come again with the next sunny forecast and do another section.  Sometime before June, we hoped the job would be complete.

In the meantime, the main leak had been covered and we would remain dry while we waited.

God promises to be our shelter in the storms of life. But unlike the roofer who waits on weather, our Heavenly Father is available 24/7. He has the sun, moon and stars at His command. He doesn’t need to wait for a storm front to pass.

The psalmist writes in Psalm 46:1”God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, Even though the earth be removed, and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

In Isaiah 25:4 the writer says of the Lord, “You have been a strength to the poor, A strength to the needy is his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, for the blast from the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.”

And though God can finish the job whenever He chooses, we can be certain that He will. Philippians 1:6 tells us, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

His shelter is the only one I really need