‘Father’. This word – this concept – was to be my focus for today’s prayer time. I sat on the porch, the cat by my feet, my phone on the table beside me with the ‘prayer app’ open. Quiet music started. The timer was set for 20 minutes. The air was heavy with humidity.
The cat was easily distracted by jasmine petals which fluttered down in a sudden breeze. Not so me. Not externally anyhow. Inwardly, thoughts of the day kept fluttering about, but each time I bid them go and returned to focus on my heavenly Father.
A few drops of rain hit the UV-filter-perspex above me. The cat moved to sit right under my seat. Then the heavens opened and sheets of rain crashed to earth. The cat disappeared … no doubt she was cowering under the bed inside. Although I tried to focus on my heavenly Father, it was quite exhilarating to sit on the porch through it all. I was dry and protected. It felt like being kept safe in the embrace of our all-powerful Father even as the world was battered.
Later, the TV news would report that 31mm of rain (1.22 inches) had fallen in just 15 minutes. Fancy choosing that exact time for my Christian meditation practice. I couldn’t even hear the timer on the prayer app alerting me to the end of the 20 minutes, it was raining so hard.
I had been protected through the storm, but not so my garden. Yet to my astonishment, the flowers in the backyard were more glorious than ever – the rain drops enhanced their beauty. Admittedly, they wouldn’t have survived certain other adverse conditions, but this torrential downpour, at least, hadn’t damaged them. Indeed, they had fared much better than the cars I later saw on the TV news which had been caught in floodwaters, or the trains on the line to my side of the city which came to a grinding halt as tracks flooded.
How did these delicate flowers survive this storm? The answer, of course, is that they are just part of bigger plants, each of which is rooted firmly in the ground. If Jesus were standing in my garden today, he may well have told a story about my backyard flowers. He did once tell a similar tale in a Middle Eastern setting about a grape vine, likening his hearers to the branches, himself to the vine, and his Father to the gardener (John 15). The point of the story was to urge his listeners to abide in him, to be tended by his Father, and so, in him, to bear much fruit.
My flowers are tougher than they look. They’re tougher than cars and trains in my area when it comes to coping with a sudden downpour. When I am abiding in Jesus, cared for by the Divine Gardener, I too am tougher than I appear.
I prefer to sit under the shelter during summer storms. I like to stay dry. In the metaphorical storms of life, however, that isn’t always possible. Yet come what may, as we abide in Jesus, tended by our Divine Father, we need not fear. Indeed, it may even be that the storms of life will somehow serve to enhance our beauty and so bring glory to our Father.
