“Will it ever stop raining?” I asked myself on Day 4 of rain. I looked out my office window at the streams of people scurrying about with their umbrellas looking more like a funeral procession than college students on their way to class.

The weather reflected what life felt like at the moment. Maybe the weather was the cause, but either way, it was hard to believe that sunny days would ever be ahead. 

In recent months, the pastor of our 2 and a half-year-old plant church accepted a call to a church in Texas, I had finally admitted to myself my increasing dissatisfaction with my position at work, managed to fracture my foot, sliced my finger open on an old bankers box, that particular rainy day, a massive cold sore break out suddenly appeared on my both my upper and lower lips, and later that week I would have my first ever migraine.  

Will it ever stop raining?

Trudging through the office that day with my gimpy foot, bandaged finger, and swollen lips, I felt like Quasimoto or Frankenstein’s assistant Igor. I didn’t have a hunchback yet, but I assumed it was just around the corner, waiting to be piled on with the rest of the junk. 

I knew, of course, that eventually it would stop raining and the sun would shine again, as it always does and as God promised us in Genesis. But did I believe that the series of unfortunate events in my life would ever stop? That I wasn’t so sure about. 

I knew that suffering and misfortune was an inevitable part of life. I was also very aware that all in all, I had it pretty good living a comfortable lifestyle, amazing friends and family who I knew I could call on for anything, but the lack of hope that I felt consistently floated to the top of the pool of life.  Maybe I was just too idealistic of a person to think that life would ever be more than simply existing in suffering. 

Did it seem better when I was younger? Was I longing for the days of old? No, there was suffering then, too. Perhaps it was that despite feeling that there was no hope, a tiny nudge of hope from beneath the shadowy places of my heart actually did exist. It was fighting to get out, fighting to be heard, fighting for victory over the shadows.

The thing about hope is that hope is like light. Think about a dark room. You cannot see anything in front of you or around you. You are unaware of your surroundings and if you try to move, you stumble over what you cannot see. If you bring even the smallest amount of light in to the room, like lighting a match or candle, you begin to see what is around you. Light can always extinguish darkness, but darkness can never overcome light. Light will always prevail.

Even though it seemed that the rain clouds and darkness would take over, hope still peeked through my cloudy heart. Hope cannot be overcome. Because true Hope is found in Jesus and Jesus is the light. 

Will it ever stop raining?

Probably not in this life. While there will be sunny days complete with whistling birds and budding flowers, rainy days will inevitably come again. Putting our hope in Jesus means that in the midst of the darkness of rainy days, an ever-shining light will forever illuminate our hearts until one day the darkness will be extinguished forever. 

“In the beginning, the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. God sent a man, John the Baptist,  to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” — John 1:1-9