I was nine or ten years old, and I was lying on my back in the grass in the yard, gazing up at the stars in the velvet blackness on a summer’s night.  Even then, as a child, I was in awe of creation and believed there must be a Creator.

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

Psalm 8:1,3-4   NIV

I didn’t find it hard to believe in an all-powerful God, who made the beauty around me–

dark, starry nights,

sweet, apple blossoms in spring,

wind sighing in the top of the elm tree,

soft down of newly-hatched chicks.

But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being.   Romans 1:19,20

I didn’t understand at the time that other parts of God’s divine nature–His love and kindness–could be seen by looking at the sky, too.

This week I watched the clouds pile up, as a cold front tumbled in from the west.

Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.

Acts 14:17   NIV

The blue overhead was quickly overtaken by steel gray cumulus, extinguishing the glorious sun’s rays.

Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime;
    it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms.
He gives showers of rain to all people,
    and plants of the field to everyone.

Zechariah 10:1   NIV

  The first heavy drops of much-needed rain chased me inside, as thunder echoed in the distance.

The downpour was brief, the line of storm clouds narrow, and soon a gusty wind  swept the showers eastward.  Through the rain-splashed window, I spotted the second gift of the thunderstorm–a rainbow, the ephemeral sign of God’s eternal promise.

I hurried into chore boots and ran outside to capture the rainbow before the brilliant arc faded.

As the sun began to sink behind me, the last rays illumined the upper parts of the cumulonimbus.

“Sing to the Lord with grateful praise.”

He covers the sky with clouds;
    he supplies the earth with rain
    and makes grass grow on the hills.

Psalm 147:8   NIV

  linking with Laura Boggess

      linking with Jennifer Dukes Lee