When it Rains

From the start it's a losing game without God.

Oh, if we don't have Him as protection from the very start, any efforts of ours, they're in vain.
They're inevitably whopping failures, brittle to break, never strong enough to save.

I awakened to this truth in a tidal wave of water droplets pouring from the sky in the early darkness of the 530 am alarm. Headed out to get a morning workout in, armed with my tiny pink umbrella, feeling awfully accomplished at my preparation for the precipitation predicted.

One step on my own to battle the elements.
Literally, the first step out the door,
and
SNAP
my very best defenses in the form of a $5 umbrella
cracked right in half and turned to helpless and hopeless in the drenching downpour.

"Daughter, could you ever really do it in your own power?"

That's what my Father God says to me in that humbling, soaked moment in the flood.
Just like that Great Flood washed the earth of the wicked, the swollen droplets crashed across a heart polluted with efforts of my own, trashed with condemnation abundant for not doing enough.

In that moment I spotted the safe haven: a bus-stop overhang.
And I sprint with unusual focus, bursting with energy uncommon for such an early hour toward the one place that assures safety, shelter from the storm.

Even if the umbrella did work for a time,
the shelter is always there,
always works,
and works better than my silly umbrella could ever muster.

Isn't that what God promises when we run to Him?
When the bondage we face forms heavy droplets and crashes cold across our warmth, rips us from His comfort and turns us to our own effort in an attempt to fake cure the disease cured on a cross?

These efforts, they only name the broken, they only reveal the hopeless beyond repair.

But the Lord and His grace and love,
it's louder,
far better,
and immeasurably more impressive than the feeble things the world serenades the searching soul with.

Know where to run.
Choose the sturdy, 
not the small, gaudy, and useless pink umbrella.