I am sitting on the Writing Porch during a thunderstorm. Clouds like black smoke are passing by. Rain began as a trickle and now is a torrent. A peal of thunder shook my sanctuary. Already it is lessening. What seems frightening may only last a moment on your time clock but can feel like an eternity.

Rain falls in buckets these days. In days gone by, it pitter-pattered on the front lawn; now it falls like the Gatorade poured over the winning football coach’s head at the Super Bowl. As the doorman told me in Toronto, Canada, so many years ago, ‘You better change your slippers,’ when he observed my sandals as I attempted to exit the hotel on a stormy Toronto day. It has been said that a Boy Scout is always prepared.

Once the thunderstorm is over, you wonder what you were afraid of. The world looks peaceful and serene in the light of day. ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.’ So it goes with life. We mark each week with anticipation. A holiday here and a birthday there. Storms have bad manners. Our revelry is interrupted callously. There is no ‘May I come in’ or ‘Are you alright’ as the English greet each other. There is the battering of the door and the shaking of the windows. The Wolf is huffing and puffing. We cower behind our two-by-four bullwark. We hope the battlements hold one more time.

The singing of birds fills the air. The sweet smell of honeysuckle. The bullfrog bellows a contented call. Life is good, he says with a broad smile. ‘Don’t worry about a storm here and there…I have seen many,’ Bullfrog says. ‘Once it stormed so much that my family had to move to higher ground,’ Bullfrog said. ‘It was in the days that the humans were fighting…although that would be most days,’ Bullfrog observed. ‘They wondered who was greater and who was less and who would win and who would lose,’ Bullfrog continued.

‘I showed my humans the rainbow over the pond after the storm,’ Helen Heron said. ‘They were amazed and took photos of it,’ HH continued. ‘They wished there were more rainbows,’ HH recalled. ‘I told them that they were quite common at the pond,’ HH noted. ‘No matter the storm you endure or the fear in your heart, God has sent us the Rainbow to promise us of his love and that weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning,’ HH whispered with tears in her eyes.