Rain.

Tonight after work while running errands, I stopped at one of the UW libraries to drop off books for a friend. It was almost 9:00pm, dark, cold, and raining. I chose not to bring an umbrella because I didn't think it would rain that heavily.

As I approached the book drop, I noticed how dead it was on campus. The library was closed and there was not a single person that I could see. As I turned away from the book drop, it started to rain hard. My glasses were covered in water droplets so I took them off because I could see better without them. I was standing under a dimly lit lamp post, about to turn away, when suddenly the opening notes to "Grace Like Rain" sounded from my ipod earphones.

I don't believe in coincidences.

So I stood there, alone, wearing only a thin sweatshirt and getting more drenched by the second, vision blurred and icy cold. And I decided to carefully listen to the words of the song. I'd heard it dozens of times, sang along to it in church, had the lyrics memorized. But it wasn't until that moment that I thought about what rain means to me. At that moment, rain meant more than just a weather phenomenon that forced me to use an umbrella. It meant more than one of Seattle's quirky trademarks. It wasn't just precipitation or the results of condensed water vapor from the atmosphere being stored up in the clouds and waiting to wash away the residue in the streets.

I thought about how truly cleansing it is, how in the lyrics of "Grace Like Rain," rain is equivalent to the grace of God. It is His forgiveness of us, even when we don't deserve it, it is His free gift of salvation, the sacrifice He made for us, it is His unconditional love of all of humanity, it is grace. And as I stood in the rain, feeling the drops fall onto my head, my face, my shoulders, my body, I understood.