Letting It Rain

  I often find myself stressing about things I don’t have much control over. National politics, the price of gas, church strains, decisions made by others far removed from my control. Sure, I can control how I respond to these things, yet that doesn’t always seem to help reduce the anxiety.

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain.” Trying to control the uncontrollable is a fool’s errand. Things will come or they won’t. We can patch the roof or carry an umbrella but we can’t make the clouds stop leaking.

  People make themselves (and others) miserable when they think they can control everything. We can’t now and we never could. I think Job understood this. When the storms of life were pounding him, He simply responded “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).

 Sometimes all we can do is wait for the rain to stop. Of sure we can complain about the rain, or wish it wasn’t raining, or sigh about all the things we could be doing if it wasn’t raining, but in the end that doesn’t do anything, well at least anything productive or good.

 There is one in control and it isn’t us. Trust that he knows why we need the rain and quit trying to think we can do anything about it.