Not Recommended For Actual Bowling.

I'm sick. I blame it on the rain. (If Milli Vanilli didn't just run through you're head, you are a robot; please do not take over the human race until after I die. From this sickness.) It's been raining nonstop for the past week here in Southern California, but the rain is just a clever delivery boy, meant to wreak pain and misery on my overtaxed immune system. Congratulations to whatever rainfall deity I have slighted, you have your revenge.

My nose feels like the Hoover Dam, constantly holding back a large amount of fluid while periodically releasing huge spurts. Kleenex, take all my money, just give me more of your fluffy softness to ease my Rudolph-an nose. My sneezes feel like someone threw a bowling ball covered in spikes at my chest...twice. However, this is not a blog meant as a forum for my personal grievances and ailments (see here). And while I cannot divorce application from anecdote, I can get to the point. And I intend to do so with all the brevity of Polonius.

I can't get over this rain. It strikes such a discordant note with man's world. Rain erodes roads, causes colds, leaks through roofs onto our restaurant tables, ruins the wash we just gave our car, floods our cherished houses, and generally musses up our slickly-moused plans. Rain is a jerk.

But, when it harmonizes with nature, rain nourishes, replenishes, hydrates, cleans, clears, grows, and nurtures much life. Rain is so integral to any ecosystem, that no life would survive without it. And that is where we may get our first clue that this place is not, in fact, man's world. That rain did not fall caring about our cars or haircuts, it came to feed the flowers. And there it's purpose is great.

No, this world is not man's. It belongs to Someone above nature, who governs it and directs it. It is His world, and He has decreed that there be such a thing as rain. Rain that can seem to cause harm on the superficial levels we cherish, but is rather an agent for growth and nourishment. He has another agent too. It is called suffering. For in suffering, the idols we uphold are shown to be tarnished and temporary. In suffering, our growth is guaranteed.

And so we come back to my sickness. It is most certainly not resisting the world to the point of shedding blood, but it is a reminder that I, like my idols, am broken. I, like the flower, need an agent of growth.

So thanks God. Thanks for the bowling ball to the chest.