Monsoon Drama: Another Sacred Stage

I’m sitting on my swing in the front of my house looking out at the Bradshaw Mountains. The sky is filled with billowy clouds, and in the distance I occasionally hear some thunder. It’s the end of the monsoon season here in Arizona.  We’ve lived in the Prescott Valley area ( 1 1/2 hours north of Phoenix)  for five years now, and this is the most amazing monsoon season I’ve experienced. I didn’t know about North America’s southwestern monsoons  before moving here. I had connected monsoons with  Asia — oh, somewhere around India.

In our area where there is minimal rain, over 300 days of clear skies and sun and high dessert dryness, I had assumed that to call the period between July and September the Monsoon Season was a charming example of hyperbole. Certainly, it is hyperbole during some years, but not this year.  I don’t know how to describe the experience.

Since the end of July, we’ve had several storms a week, I suppose. It’s nothing like the  day long rains and drab, damp weather we can have in the Midwest. Instead, these are temperamental skies that take hours  to paint a cloud-filled stage accompanied by gusty winds, appearing about to storm, but that may choose to pass on by without dropping their moisture. What will happen? As the skies create dramatic scenes of dark, rumbling ranges of moody clouds in one portion of the sky —  in contrast to bright, rounded, cheerful clouds with glowing light piercing their edges visible from the opposite direction, I wait.

From the south the sky trembles. The storm chooses not to dissipate like a shamed mongrel retreating to his corner. Blurting out  mighty crashes  followed by razor-fine flashes of lightning streaking the sky,  a downpour finally breaks upon us, like a bottomless bucket upset and released.  Dry river beds called washes that were rugged dirt beds morph into raging rivers, and even our stone yard creates beautiful streams.  The  white and tan stones sparkle as the fresh water dances over them.

I put on my flip-flops and like a laughing child, slosh through the new, little stream running next to our front porch. Ha, ha!  Thank you, LORD, for this wonderful opportunity to enjoy my little corner of Your world.  When I trust You with my life and circumstances (including the weather), I’m free to enjoy the present, seeing  great things in  everyday things.  As I suggested in my last post, “if we reframe our mundane days as sacred, our location as a sanctuary, our activities as purposeful (set apart for a purpose),”  then whatever we’re doing “will take on a  beauty.”  There’s nothing mundane about this monsoon season, but I suppose I could learn to take it all for granted. I don’t think I ever will.  What a show!

I would also say, when we trust in the Lord with all our hearts and do not lean on our own understanding (as instructed in Proverbs 3:5), then not only will He guide us (as He promises in verse 6), but  we will also experience joy, and He will be pleased.  It is His pleasure that we find pleasure in His creative activity.  This monsoon drama is another sacred stage.  I’m not hiding from it.

Oh, oh! Here comes another monsoon shower! Where are those flip-flops?