“When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery.  He wants him to know all that being alive can bring.  That is his best gift.  There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.”

— Thornton Wilder

Being human in the midst of all the universe has to offer is a magnificent experience.   There are few times that illustrate this better than the morning after a storm.  The rain began yesterday afternoon; and, although it made the roads a bit slippery, there was nothing remarkable about it.  Soon the wind began to pick up and send the rain flying sideways as well as vertically.  By the time we left a friend’s home in early evening, there was a stream flowing down the road toward the bottom of the hill we had ascended earlier.  Spring Creek Road.  What a lovely image.  A country road that winds through the trees and parallels the creek that sits fifty yards away.  We have learned from past experience that in storms like these, the “road” part of its name vanishes and it simply becomes a creek.  We turned toward higher ground and made our way home, avoiding all roads with any sort of water in their names.

Later that night, under cover of darkness, a huge gust of wind took the chairs from our porch and sent them flying down the hill in front of our house and into the street below.  As we sat and listened to it howl and heard the rainwater gushing from the downspouts and overflowing the gutters, I could only wonder what other surprises might await us this morning.

The wind still demands our attention today as it tosses the clouds, first north and then south, back and forth across the morning sky.  Branches pruned by Mother Nature lie on the ground all through the park.  Here a trash can, there its lid, in the middle of nowhere a play ball blown from a neighboring house.  Everywhere the earthworms crawl, washed to the surface by the rising water.  Now they make their way across the park road in search of soil.

I am drawn to the edge of the creek.  It calls much louder as last night’s rain rushes over the rocks and assures that its song will be heard.  Then I see it.  The ancient willow lies across the water from one bank to the other, a bridge built overnight at the expense of its survival.  The new growth stands up along its trunk rather than swaying in the breeze.  Its roots lie exposed near a hole where it used to stand.  I feel tears well in my eyes as I realize that the whole landscape has changed with one gust of wind.  I look up through the branches of a budding maple and see its flowers display their spring-green beauty against a sky so blue that it is hard to imagine all that happened last night as the clouds blew through town.

This is the way life displays itself when we dare to be small and human and vulnerable in the midst of all the universe has to offer.  I stand for a minute at the spot where the willow once seemed invincible and realize that I, too, am at the mercy of being mortal and of being a very small piece of a magnificent landscape that has existed forever and will go on long after my own roots are gone.

I look to the sky once again and see the new life in the maple flowers.  I see the beauty and promise in the bright blue sky, washed clean by the rain that fell last night.

This is what our Creator wishes for us, his creatures — to know all of life in all its power.  There is no better time to discover this power than the morning after a magnificent storm.