"The Sky Has Cleared" - 08/24/2026

Yesterday evening my daughters were rollerblading with me at the park, and we were having a good time until the sky opened up without warning. We ran for the car, and by the time we got there, the girls were soaked through, laughing and shivering at once the way kids do. It was loud and wet and a little chaotic. 
This morning, I looked outside and the sky was washed clean. Not a cloud in sight, just that clear, quiet blue that only shows up after a storm has had its say. It got me thinking about how yesterday is yesterday, and today really is new. Not because the calendar changed, but because God's mercy doesn't run out overnight. 


Scripture
"See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come." — Song of Songs 2:11-12 (NIV)

Reflection
There is a particular quiet that follows a heavy rain. The wind that scattered branches the night before has gone still. The air smells washed, almost sweet. Puddles hold small mirrors of a sky that, only hours ago, was doing its best to fall down around us. And the world does not look tired from the storm. It looks rinsed. Ready.

That is not a small thing to notice. So much of faith is learning to trust that what falls hard in the night does not get the final word over what rises soft in the morning.
I think of how quickly children forget a soaking. Within minutes of getting into the car last night, wet clothes and all, the girls were already laughing about it, already retelling the story to each other like it was the best part of the evening. There is something almost holy in that kind of resilience, the ability to let a storm be a storm without letting it become the whole story. Maybe that is closer to what the Song of Songs is reaching for than we first realize.

 The winter, the rains, the long stretch of waiting, they are real. They are not denied or rushed past. But they are not permanent residents either. They pass. And when they pass, something in us, like something in the earth, remembers how to sing again.

I think, too, of חֶסֶד [chesed], that rich Hebrew word often translated mercy, or steadfast love, because no single English word holds all of it. Chesed is not a love that shows up once and disappears. It is loyal. It renews itself. It shows up this morning exactly as it showed up yesterday, whether the sky was clear or the storm was raging. The clearing we see after rain is not evidence God was absent during the downpour. It is evidence that mercy was at work the whole time, even in the parts we could not see, even in the noise and pressure and water falling too fast.

Maybe that is part of what it means to trust that yesterday is yesterday. Not that it didn't matter, and not that it gets erased, but that it doesn't get to hold today hostage. The storm had its hour. It said what it needed to say. Now the sky, without any effort of its own, has simply become clear again. That is grace in its most ordinary clothing. Not a lightning bolt of revelation, but a Monday morning where the clouds have moved on and the light comes through plain and generous.

There is an invitation in a morning like this one. Not to forget the rain, and not to pretend it never came, but to notice that after every downpour, the world still knows how to open its eyes again. The flowers still know how to appear. The season of singing still knows how to come, in its own time, on its own terms, not because we forced it, but because that is simply how mercy behaves. It keeps showing up. It keeps making all things new, one ordinary, washed, quiet morning at a time.
 

Prayer
Gracious God, thank You for the rain that fell last night and for the clear sky You have given this morning. Thank You that Your mercy does not wait for the storm to end before it begins working, and that it does not run dry when the night grows loud. Help us release what belongs to yesterday, and receive today as the gift You mean it to be. Wash in us whatever needs washing, and clear in us whatever needs clearing, so that we, too, might rise ready to sing. Amen.