Step Into the Rain

"It's been raining cats and dogs!"
"I know, I just stepped in a poodle!" 🐩

It's definitely an oldie and probably not a goodie, but it describes last weekend perfectly. More than two solid days of drenching rain. For some reason, it really caught my attention. Maybe because my plans were foiled, maybe because it just didn't stop. There was no let-up, not even enough to, say, grill up a couple of tasty burgers. By the time I noticed a window and got the grill fired up, the torrent was back. The following day was just as soggy. Rain, rain, and more rain. And as I sat at my kitchen table late Sunday afternoon, and the sound of a steady downpour whispered its way through the window screen, I thought of... 

Snow! That's right, snow. Where I come from, snow is one of those things folks love to hate. It's beautiful. It's peaceful. It's charming. Until it isn't. When the weather begins to change and folks' minds start turning to snow, each and every time it rains instead, someone always says (I'll pause to give those of you who know a chance to say it)... 

"Can you imagine if this was all snow?" 

So, maybe I didn't actually think of snow, but I thought of that question. And then I thought of another question:

Can you imagine if this was all grace?

All that rain. Coming down in buckets. For days. Can you imagine if it was all grace? And it is. 

There is a song sung during the Passover celebration, "Dayenu," translated, "it would have been enough." As the story of God's goodness to His people, Israel, is told, each stanza ends with "dayenu."  Just an example:

"If God had brought us out of Egypt, and had not inflicted judgment upon the Egyptians, it would have been sufficient. Dayenu!
"If God had inflicted justice on them, and had not executed judgment against their gods, it would have been sufficient. Dayenu!

"If God had executed judgment against their gods, and had not slaughtered their firstborn, it would have been sufficient. Dayenu!"

And on and on it goes. Like God's grace. When we stop to consider each and every blessing God bestows upon us, we can see the abundance of God's grace, how it has been the means by which He pursued us and the means by which He restored us. When we look back at the twists and turns our lives have taken, knowing that even the worthless life we had before our rebirth God is using to prepare us and strengthen us for His work, we can't help but weep at the grace of being chosen by One so awesome as He. When we pause to imagine what might have happened had God not intervened or what our lives were like when we rejected His grace, we can stand in the torrent of God's grace and get absolutely drenched. When we see ourselves by the light of God's truth and know how reprobate we truly are, we will know that His smallest benevolence on our behalf would have been enough. Dayenu! 

Take time today and step into a poodle.