Umbrellas and Rainy Days

In China, their rainy and typhoon season is squeezed between the end of spring and the beginning of summer. During this time, their western and middle provinces experience the brunt of flashfloods and a lot of crop and property destructions, notwithstanding the lives that tragically ends. Luckily for most southern and eastern parts, the floods are not a usual occurrence despite the equally strong rains coming.

Our workplace and my habitual residence are in this southern side.

In the past years, I have unpleasant experiences of being caught unprepared by a sudden downpour that this year I made the “perfect” plan to make sure I will be rain-proofed. First, I kept one umbrella in our workplace. Second, I set aside another umbrella in my residence. Third and as a final precaution, I saved another umbrella inside our regular company car that we use going back and forth to work. Yup, I felt safe and secured. Until, one day, for unknown reason, another car was lent to us instead. While inside the car the rain started to pour real hard. That is when I realized that my three umbrellas were all in other locations other than with me.

I was clearly mistaken to assume that I can totally avoid rain by having more umbrellas than necessary.

This reminded me the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16-20, “…There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!" But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?”

In striking similarity in our lives, we also have these “security-umbrellas” that comes in the forms of money, career, fame or power that we vainly try to accumulate in our pursuit of happiness and security. A lot of us are devoting more and more time gaining these “perishable goods” than to enrich our selves with what is of heavenly importance – to love and to serve others. What is more sad is that we already have all the historical and real-life accounts of those rich, powerful and famous people who have reached their pinnacle of success only to confess in their old age or at death-bed that their pursuits were nothing but a chase after the wind and that they have lived a life of regret. But it seems the message still has not sunk in yet into our consciousness and into our conscience.

So how we should live has been forthrightly pinpointed in Luke 12: 34-35, “Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

During the whole trip, amidst the pouring rain, I was worrying since I was as sure as daylight that I am going to be soaking wet later. It was raining for the duration of our 45-minute trip so how can I possibly even thought that it would stopped before I step out of the car in a few more minutes. But to my surprise, the rain started to drizzle down as we approached our factory area. Finally, when we stepped out of the car, all I felt was a few mists blowing into my face.

In life, we have a lot of rain, a lot of downpours that could easily cast a dark shadow of worry and anxiety in us. Some of these “rains” are failed marriages, an un-reconciled past, financial troubles and dire poverty, broken family, an addiction, untimely lost of a loved ones, critical or debilitating physical challenges and unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Sadly, when others feel that their problems are far from being resolve, they start to worry. They started to despair. They regress. Then, they give up. They lose hope. And finally, they hide inside their inner shelves, closing the doors with an abloy padlock and throwing away the keys into the river for no one to recover.

But the right attitude was clearly proclaimed, amongst other biblical verses, in Proverbs 3:5-6 saying, “ Trust in the LORD with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not; In all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths.”

Truly, umbrellas are always synonymous with rains yet neither one should distract us away from our life-mission.
We can do with one umbrella to keep us dry.
And we need not worry as to when the rain will end.

All we need is to trust Him because God knows exactly what we need in any given moment.
Now that’s a rain or shine promise He faithfully keeps.