How the Winds do Change

The sun is shining through some thick white clouds as I help my mother spread some gravel in the front yard. After a few minutes, I take a casual look up into the sky and notice that there are huge, dark storm clouds coming from the north advancing, rather rapidly, towards the south and directly over us. As I looked south into the sky, the sun was still shining bright and the sky was blue and clear with some thick puffy white clouds. I called out, a little nervously, to my Mom and said it looked like some storm clouds were headed our way. Without looking up from her work, she said she heard something about 70 mph winds in Chicago on the local news.

Less than a minute after that, we felt the wind pick up tremendously and now the sky, which was previously half clear and half dark, was now completely dark above us and the wind started whipping everything around us. Trees were starting to shake and we grabbed all the tools and ran into the garage. Moments later, the rain started thundering down and pelting the windows in our house.

View from my garage.

There is something about thunderstorms that always evokes a sense of fear and trepidation within me. There is a verse in the Qur'an,

"The thunder hymneth His praise and (so do) the angels for awe of Him."

My Mom always taught me to pray, whenever it looked like it would rain, that it would be a blessed and merciful rain, one with which God revives and restores the land, not one bearing His punishment. The suddenness, and intensity, of the storm reminded me of how tenuous our hold is and how indebted we are to Him.

Now, as I look through the window, the rain has settled into a soft drizzle and the sun is starting to peek back through the clouds...the storm is gone, as quick as it had come...