The Beauty of the Ashes: Rainy Days and Mondays

Remember your word to your servant, because you have given me hope.

This is my comfort in my trouble, that your promise gives me life.

Psalm 119:49-50

“Hangin around, nothin to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” Back in 1971, Karen Carpenter sang these words to the top of the Pop Music charts. While I don’t know what she was feeling when she wrote those words, they sure connected with a lot of people, including me. In the lyrics to the song, she alludes to the fact that the feeling has come and gone before, and there’s no need to talk it out. Actually, I think we need to talk it out if we’re feeling the blues, and the first person we need to start talking it out with is God.

I guess everyone sings the Blues sometimes, but there’s a quality of life found in the Christian faith that transcends those rainy day blues. As I write this it’s raining outside. I have to confess, I love rainy days. Kinda crazy, I know, but I just like the way the rain smells fresh and the watered ground seems to come to life. That’s what God’s Word does for our souls; it’s like fresh rain on dry and thirsty land.

“That’s what God’s Word does for our souls;

it’s like fresh rain on dry and thirsty land.”

The Psalmist prays for God to remember his word to his servant. He knows that God speaks words of life and promise that bring hope and comfort. In fact, he says God’s words are life itself. Pretty cool isn’t it? The God who spoke creation into existence with His words of life, spoke words long ago in the scriptures that still bring life today as we read and remember them.

I always think of the season of Lent as a time of refreshing Spring showers from God, watering the garden of my soul. Gardens tend to get weeds in them after the long winter of neglect and so do our souls if we don’t tend them properly.

The beauty of the Christian life is that the Living God invites us into communion with the Himself. We don’t have to let our souls and spirits get dry and thirsty – we don’t have to get the blues, but if we do, we have the promises of God’s word to bring us hope and comfort.

Karen Carpenter also wrote in those lyrics that, “Funny, but it seems that it’s the only thing to do, run and find the one who loves me”. I hope she meant that the “one” was God, although she may have meant some one she was in love with or her brother Richard. However, like the psalmist, we can know that when rainy days or Mondays or anything starts to get us down we can run to God, the God who made us, who loves us, and who promises to bring beauty from ashes…

“…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.”

Isaiah 61:3

Shalom for a Holy Lent,

Pastor Brad