gliding from sunny thunder

I was in the dining room, head down, heart down too, cleaning up soupy bowls and crusty forks, and it was a fluke that I happened to look up.

Outside our windows, the rain tore down, slanted lines, and the sunlight was fierce and yellow through the grey-black clouds. The tree leaves were turned upside down with the wildness of the wind, straining for the sky; their red bellies reminded me of a picture of inside-out umbrellas in an old children's book I read many years ago.

For a minute, a true full minute, I couldn't breathe for the violent beauty of the sky and the rain and the tree and the sun's shining. I wanted to cry out, to point to the windows and beg the people around me, Don't you see this? But they were drinking their coffee, huddling over their privacy, laughing at their own little worlds. I wanted to grab their hands, draw them to the door, say, Come dance in the rain with me, come laugh and cry and live with me. I wanted to rip off my headset, flee the short-ceilinged room and fling my arms to the heavens and tilt my face to the clouds and tell God, I know You are here, in me, in this storm.

But there was work to be done, tables to be cleared, dishes to be washed, coffee to be poured, supervisors to check in with. So I put my head back down, tucked my hopes into a far corner of my heart, and picked up the tray. The headset crackled, and I was back in the dreary world the rain couldn't touch.

Somehow, my heart remained outside, twirling in the midst of the violent rainshine whirlwind, and I knew that beauty, and hope, and the presence of the LORD, will always belong to those who want it, who look for it, who know the emptiness of their hands and reach up to God and say, Fill me.