Horizontal Rain

"And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains were covered" Genesis 7:20

It felt like that walking home today. 'Any minute now' I thought to myself 'The earth is going to drown'. I reality it was me drowning walking from the train station to my house.

It's a pretty disgusting feeling, having water running off your coat, down your legs and into your shoes. Everything feels cold and stiff. Each rain drop is so small but at the same time so wetting. You only need to be out in the rain for a few moments before you are soaked. Then there is the horizontal rain... In most places gravity pulls the rain straight down to the ground. Where I live, that doesn't happen very often. Instead we have this phenomena call horizontal rain. The wind blows the rain drops faster than they can fall down. So they sort of move parallel to the ground, at speed. This is the most wetting rain of all. And naturally I was walking home in it.

So why am I quoting Genesis? Well as easy as it is, to look outside, or in my case listen to the rain falling outside, and complain, well, we need to remember that its nothing like that flood. That flood was of biblical proportions. Hmmm, funny that.

Its easy to say in winter that the bad weather goes on forever. Why does raining for a couple of days equal forever? Yes, rain isn't the nicest, but at the same time why don't we complain when we have weeks of endless sunshine in the summer? In reality, as much as we hate rain, we need to be grateful, that it doesn't rain for 40 days straight, creating a flood that covers the whole earth.

Lets look into that, today was wet, it was cold, and there was the famous horizontal rain I talked about earlier. Was it terrible? Not really. I got a little wet walking home, but I had dry clothes to change into. Did the rain stop? Sort of. It might mean that I don't put the washing outside tomorrow because of fear of getting it wet by passing showers but again, we can live with this. This is why we have tumble dryers and clothes racks.

Further on in Genesis, we read that after 40 days, the rain stops. And God puts a rainbow in the sky, and says in essence He won't do it again. But this is more than just the type of apologies you made in the play ground when your mum told you off for stealing the other child's ball. He meant this one, this was a promise.
"When I bring clouds over the earth, and the rainbow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my promise between me you and every living creature. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy."Genesis 9:14-15

Sometimes I sit there and try to imagine what life would be like on an ark, full of every animal. I mean the whole thing seems so massive. A great flood, huge boat with lots of animals and even bigger boredom. Imagine it raining for 40 days... I have to confess I get bored after a week. That flood is probably why there are so many card games around now. And Monopoly... Its not a wet holiday with out Monopoly.

Maybe we should be really grateful that we don't have to go through this again. 40 days of continious rain. Probably 40 days of continous horizontal rain. Maybe as much as it pains me to say this, as inconvenient as it is to walk home in the rain, with the horizontal rain and the feeling soggy, maybe I should be celebrating that I know the rain is going to stop. Perhaps not right away but it will. God promised.

<3 Squeak