Rain Dance

I stood and watched a rain dance for a while last night. Well, not one by a Native American. You see, it was raining last night, and around our house are several trees and bushes. Some of the smaller bushes seem to struggle to grow under the shadow of the bigger trees that tower over them. And when it's raining, the rain drops from the taller trees onto the smaller bushes.

I watched that last night, as lots of rain ran off the leaves and limbs above and dropped onto the smaller bush below, seemingly beating the smaller bush down. But every time the limb on the smaller bush was pushed down by the rain, it popped back up again. Up and down, up and down, side to side, up and down. The bush was doing a rain dance. It may have moved a lot but it was never kept down.

And it made me think about the way life often seems to send lots of rain into our lives, sometimes for long periods of time. Sometimes we feel beaten up when it pours on us. The rain drops come fast and furious. The question is whether or not we have what it takes to pop back up, to embrace the rain and let it run down into our roots to help us grow, as the bush outside my house does. Do we have what it takes to do the rain dance? When life pours on the rain, can we find the strength and the courage to dance?