Freewrite: Tender Mercies

So for work today I wrote up an FHE lesson help about recognizing the Lord’s tender mercies. (Check it out for more awesome thoughts on that). Having, by association, preached that we should all be more aware of God’s blessings, I thought it only appropriate to share a blessing I noticed today.

Utah’s weather has been ridiculous lately. After weeks of sun, this week’s forecast was rain, rain, and more rain. This morning started cloudy but warm, and then at noon these huge black clouds rolled in and thick, heavy rain fell from the sky with a vengeance.

Claro, our lunch break perfectly coincided with the worst of the storm. My coworkers and I hadn’t packed any food because we were planning on eating out together, but we looked out our window wall at the city, and going outside didn’t seem like a very fun idea.

There are very few things I hate worse than wet shoes. I like rain just fine, but I hate wet shoes.

But my friends were better equipped than I (they wore boots, I wore sandals today. NO idea what I was thinking when I got dressed this morning), so I thought, “Fine, I won’t be a pansy. I’ll just get it over with.”

We took the elevator down to the first floor. The doors opened up and we got a good look at the street level of the city.

Water. Everywhere.

My desire to just go hungry greatly increased, but then my co-workers shared a glance and said, “Let’s go through the underground parking.”

That was music to my ears. “We can get a block away through underground parking??”

Sure enough, we could! And we did. It was quite literally a maze down there, but my co-workers knew all the ways to hop from parking lot to parking lot, and when we reemerged, we were suddenly on the opposite end of the City Creek shopping center.

My sandaled feet were perfectly dry, and it wasn’t cold down there, either.

I was SO glad for underground parking lots.

Which is unlike me, because as a general rule I much prefer rural areas to busy city centers. I’ve always found it claustrophobic and uncomfortable to be surrounded by streets, skyscrapers, and parking garages. But today I saw the benefit and blessing of underground parking lots.

Do you think God was aware of how happy it would make me to stay dry today when He put things in motion for that underground parking system to be built? Do you think He sees every little smile that even a city feature can put on one of His children’s faces?

I think He does. And I don’t think He gets much credit for all the smiles we give on any given day.

So today, even though to you it might seem ridiculous to be grateful for something so insignificant, I’m still going to show my appreciation.

And now it’s sunny and blue outside, like nothing even happened. Spring weather really is weird. But I’m sure somehow, somewhere, someone saw that rain storm today as a tender mercy.

It’s all about perspective.