Last night at a little after midnight we were awoken by the sound of enormous thunder. A crash of lightening lit up the sky like the daylight. Samson (the dog) who had been asleep at my feet leaped several feet into the air and started barking.
I arose from my warm and comfy bed to go and open the back door for him, as he was determined to see what was going on outside. In the short walk from my bed to the patio door the heavens opened up. I mean they OPENED up! It was as if a gigantic bucket, in the hands of a thousand angels was being tipped out over my house. Walls of water, solid sheets of water hammered the house. Samson of course quickly decided that he did not need to see what was going on outside and went swiftly back to bed.
I lay awake for some time, listening to the heavy sound of the sheets of water pouring over the house. It was so intense I fully expected there to be leaks going on somewhere. Surely when I awake tomorrow in the light of day there will be puddles of water inside the house, it simply is not possible to contain such amounts of water in such a short time.
That is how it rolls in New Mexico, we go for long periods of time with no water at all, no moisture. Everything becomes dry and parched, and then all of a sudden, the heavens open and all that rain comes down in the space of about 5 to 20 minutes.
I do love the rain, love the power and intensity of a good thunder storm, love to watch the water cascading down the roads, washing out my backyard, overflowing from everything that can contain water. The more powerful the storm, the harder the rain falls, the more I love it. I even love walking in the rain, and have many good memories of such walks.
I learned to love walking in the rain when I lived in England, many years ago. There, if you want to walk, if you intend to take your dog out for a stroll, you simply cannot allow rain to stop you, and there I learned that walking in rain is actually a very enjoyable experience.
Years later when my firstborn son came along, I taught him to walk in the rain, we used to get our boots on, and our raincoats and go for walks with the dog. We made it a point to step in every puddle. I sure miss those days. So miss the laughter and the innocence of that time.
My younger son and I had our moments in the rain also, walking through the puddles and later on driving through the puddles. We got stuck in a huge puddle once, and by the time we got the truck out it looked like it had been dipped in chocolate. We still laugh about that, near every time we pass that place.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to laugh in the rain, the troubles of life have been like a huge storm, sheets of sorrow falling down upon us. We have sat, huddled in our skins, waiting for the storm to pass, and yet the waters continue to rage. It is time to put the raincoats on, time to go out and splash in the puddles, time to dance in the rain.
This journey, started a few years ago, and still ongoing, has taught me a lot. God has been working in my life, drawing me closer to Him, teaching me about Him, teaching me about trials and hardships and how to continue walking with Him, trusting Him, even when things are not as I would want. I have learned a lot, and have finally come to a place where I have peace in the midst of the downpour..........but I hear Him calling me forward.........we are not done in this journey yet...........He still is trying to teach me how to have joy in the rain, how to dance in the rain, how to raise my arms to the heavens, throw my head back and laugh out loud to the God of creation.....right there in the middle of the storm.
Don't you desire that? Don't you long to laugh in the rain? Don't you long to feel that joy in your heart, that carefree joy, even when it is raining?
I believe it is possible, and I believe it is desired. I am not talking about happiness. It is not possible to be happy when someone you care about dies too young. It is not possible to be giddy when a family loses a young father and now walks without him, it is not possible to be carefree and giggly when someone you love battles against darkness and depression. I am talking about joy, not happiness.
Have I forgotten that great beauty comes from suffering? How many beautiful diamonds are made swiftly and without pressure?Most natural diamonds are formed at high temperature and pressure at depths of 87 to 120 miles in the Earth's mantle.That is a huge amount of pressure!
And can you just pour molten metal into a mold and have a functioning sword come forth, one that can stand up against another blade without breaking, one that is a thing of beauty and grace? No! Why even a fork poured out in such a way would not stand up to life. God is in the act of creating! He is the Creator! He is fashioning something beautiful, something wondrous, something useful. The rain, the downpours, the thunder and the lightening, the pressures and sorrows of this life can be a means to an end, if we simply submit to the hand of the Creator. Dance in the rain! Lift up your hands to the heavens and sing! God is crafting something beautiful!
Yield to the fire, fold to the beat of the hammer, absorb the water to quench the heat, step into the fire to allow the reheating, and fold upon fold, quench after quench, and fire after fire.....and one day from the water is pulled such a sword!
Take a moment and read up on the ancient art of creating a masterpiece sword. I have often thought of the art of sword-making as a means of seeing God's hand at work in our lives. We the material, He the Master Smith. Not all metal is strong enough to endure the crafting, and not all metal is intended for swords. It takes much pressure, tremendous hardship, and lots of pain to turn steel into tamahagane, and it takes much crafting to turn the tamahagane into a sword fit for the hand of a King.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/samurai/swor-nf.html
Japanese
How diamonds are formed.
In mineralogy, diamond (from the ancient Greek αδάμας – adámas "unbreakable") is a metastable allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at standard conditions. Diamond is renowned as a material with superlative physical qualities, most of which originate from the strong covalent bonding between its atoms. In particular, diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any bulk material. Those properties determine the major industrial application of diamond in cutting and polishing tools and the scientific applications in diamond knives and diamond anvil cells.
Because of its extremely rigid lattice, it can be contaminated by very few types of impurities, such as boron and nitrogen. Small amounts of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) color diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (lattice defects), green (radiation exposure), purple, pink, orange or red. Diamond also has relatively high optical dispersion (ability to disperse light of different colors).
Most natural diamonds are formed at high temperature and pressure at depths of 140 to 190 kilometers (87 to 120 mi) in the Earth's mantle. Carbon-containing minerals provide the carbon source, and the growth occurs over periods from 1 billion to 3.3 billion years (25% to 75% of the age of the Earth). Diamonds are brought close to the Earth′s surface through deep volcanic eruptions by a magma, which cools into igneous rocks known as kimberlites and lamproites. Diamonds can also be produced synthetically in a high-pressure high-temperature process which approximately simulates the conditions in the Earth's mantle. An alternative, and completely different growth technique is chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Several non-diamond materials, which include cubic zirconia and silicon carbide and are often called diamond simulants, resemble diamond in appearance and many properties. Special gemological techniques have been developed to distinguish natural and synthetic diamonds and diamond simulants.