the windows of Heaven opened - and the rain came tumbling down.

Rain is gushing down in wild torrents, so solid they look like sheets of some thin fabric flapping about in the wind.

Silvery grey puddles are all over the yard, making rainboots and toy boats seem like the most fun ideas of the summer.

Most of all, for the first time in months, it isn't unbearably hot. Warm, yes. But oh, such relief for grass and trees, flowers and birds, animals and people, is this rainy day!

The fat drops hit the asphalt looking for all the world like fairies dancing, and if I didn't have a headache, I'd go out and join them. But it's wonderful to sit at the window, cup of tea in hand, and just watch the tired, sagging, hot earth be renewed and refreshed.

I'm so grateful I wasn't born before the Flood, because how boring and uninspiring would it be for mist to rise from the ground and do all the watering? I imagine that even the people who were about to die couldn't help but admire the magnificent first rainfall. Maybe that was the moment they actually believed in God.

But for Noah and his family, safe in the ark, with the hand of God protecting them, what a gloriously sad sight the first rain must've been. What a fulfillment of promise! For surely some of them had, at one weak moment or another, allowed a creeping bit of doubt to enter their minds about the validity of God's statement and command. After all, they and their parents and their grandparents and on and on had only known the quiet moisture seeping up from the earth. Water from the sky? Massive amounts of water breaking open the earth? Enough to engulf the whole world? Likely there was a tiny bit, (or a large bit; we aren't really told,) of incredulity in some of their hearts.

And then, aboard the ark, they witnessed, or at least felt, the "windows of Heaven opened and the fountains of the deep broken up."

God had fulfilled His promise, and if there had been skepticism in any heart, I bet it was banished in the twinkling of an eye, and the man or woman who had doubted the Creator of all felt very foolish.

Maybe there will be a pale, watery, but absolutely beautiful, rainbow this afternoon, calling to mind God's promise to never flood the whole earth again. And we can rejoice, as countless generations before have rejoiced, that our God is a God who keeps His promises.