Father Sky sketched an overcast sky today, a gentle veil of clouds hiding the sunshine and the pageant of sunset. The sky was colorful in a muted melted vanilla, rolled up with cigar smoke grays and pale purples and sterling silvers. A few lightning bolts firecrackered near dusk but the silver raindrops haven’t arrived yet. The yellow sun and the beautiful blue sky are always present but the clouds come and go each day, always taking a new path. Adrienne Posey says we should “dance with the clouds.” Just as the storms of living life bring darkness, God is always present with his love and holy light to pierce the darkness, to remove the clouds, to bring sunshine back into our lives. The dark cloudy days are what make us appreciative of our beautiful blessings of sunshine. Sajal Sazzad reminds us, “the more clouds you have in your sky, the more colourful sunset will be.” Always look for God’s silver lining in your cloud and as Maya Angelou writes try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.

As the afternoon passed, I watched the horizon be fogged in a river of smoky mist, caricaturing a rainy day in a forest fairy tale of children’s dragons. The air was cool and the horizon murky, heavy with a coming thunderstorm. Father Sky had filled the heavens with rain clouds, their bellies blue and purple and left it up to Mother Nature to shade their crowns with her watercolors, highlighting the gray clouds beautifully as twilight crept up the horizon and the day ended. I love to get a color chart and match the colors to the landscape. Mother Nature used her gray palette of silver tonight on the clouds, brush stroking French silver, silver feather, and classic sterling silver shades across the clouds in the rainy heavens.

I was missing Mother Nature’s watercolor of the sunset late afternoon but I knew as Meeta Ahluwalia writes, the sun “danced wild across the evening sky, dispersing clouds with the frill of her gown,” waking the night sky’s purple velvet pinned with a luminous moon and handfuls of Tiffany’s diamonds flung from Father Sky’s hands. The rain is pouring from the sky now and I love hearing the rain’s symphony accented with a few cymbal claps of thunder.

I could just imagine the sun dressed at sunset in her duck yellow rain slicker, yellow patent leather rain boots on her slender rayed feet, splashing down the horizon on the arm of Father Sky, who was covering them both with his large mahogany handled black umbrella. Father Sky was dressed handsomely in his pewter London Fog trench coat, cranberry scarf tied fashionably around his neck. He’s wearing practical L.L.Bean duck boots, old and comfortable. Under her rain slicker the sun is dressed in a silver fox gray evening gown, blending in perfectly with the cloudy horizon, so when she takes off her slicker and steps on the stage of sunset, she walks down the horizon and no one sees her.

“Only a select few are able to see the true beauty that lies behind what just might seem like a rainy day or a gray sky,” Jessica M. Laar. The beauty in a rainy day, I hope you can see it and appreciate it. Not just in the wondrous watercolors of grays coloring the clouds in the heavens but see the beauty of God’s joy and hope in the blessings of the world around us. God sends the rain to water the Earth and continuously rains his loving warmth down upon us. Life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. We need days of reflection to help us remember God’s faithfulness in our lives, reminding us to serve him and go to him in prayer and thanksgiving. Psalm 145:13 reads, “The Lord is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made.”

The rain and life’s storms will eventually end and the dreary day will bloom into the warmth of the sunshine. God is with us on the dreary rainy days, holding an umbrella of faith over our heads. He never leaves us alone on the dark days but we have to reach out and grab his outstretched hands. He will always help us stand tall in our faith.

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” —Rabindranath Tagore