We were there to repair the stepping stones and bricks that comprised the path through the gardens.
However, a storm was brewing.
Miles out to sea the ominous black mountain of clouds had gathered. Even from where we stood, we could see cascading down its sides a grey avalanche of drenching rain.
The sun, the herald of the day, had relinquished its domain to an unnatural midday gloom, lingering clouds shadowing the landscape.
Obliterating everything in its path, the smothering deluge rushed toward shore, driven onward, inward, its fury unleashed by an unseen hand.
Like a giant street sweeper in the sky, it whirled its contents sideways and down, the accompanying wind whipping the sea below into white-capping foam.
Anything unfortunate to be out there disappeared behind the curtain of rain.
It was a panorama of power.
With no time to put our stepping stones and bricks in place, we sought refuge within the shelter of our car as all around us was lashed by the intensity of the storm.
“There is peculiar terror in a tempest at sea, when…the raging sea echoes to the angry sky,” reads an excerpt from “The Treasury of David” concerning Psalm 29.
“There is no sight more alarming than the flash of lightening around the mast of the ship, and no sound more calculated to inspire reverent awe than the roar of the storm.”
Such is suffering.
There are times in our lives when, in grief’s grip, tears – like rain – fall unbidden.
Storms of sadness break, painful memories are suddenly recalled, flashbacks are triggered with little warning.
What to do when sorrows like sea billows roll?
Take shelter.
And when the storm passes, and the sun breaks through the gloom, emerge to lay the next stepping stone.
And the one after that.
For those who follow.
