Hail

“Hurry, Will!  Cover that row!” I scatter bean seeds at my feet.  My son scurries after me, lugging a bucket of compost.

“Mom, those clouds look like a rough ocean.” He pauses, chin uplifted, fist poised over furrow.  I glance up.

“They do.”  I scan the sky. Then, “Will, go to the house.  Grab those toys on your way.  I’ll be in as soon as I finish.”  Will drops his pail and scampers past me.  Overhead, the clouds writhe in expectancy.  Then they roar.

“That a train?” my husband hesitates on his way to the chicken coop, head cocked, buckets of water in hand.  Then, suddenly, a soft thud.  I look up from the row near which I’m stooped and stare at the icy sphere that so abruptly came to rest in the hard dirt.  My husband’s voice rouses me.

“Sarah, to the house!  To the house!”  I look up at him.

“My seeds…”

“Go!  Now!”  And so I run. I run to the beat of the hailstones that plummet the tin roofs of the coop, the barn, the house.  I run, hand over my head, icy pellets tapping at my feet.

Once inside, I am drawn to the window.  I cannot help but gaze at the ice that falls from the leaden sky.  Ten-month old Nathan, startled by the drumming on the roof, clutches my shirt.

“Oh, B.J., the goats!”

“I know, Hon.  I didn’t have time to open the barn door.”  My husband comes to stand beside me, and together we watch the goats’ frantic attempts to dodge the hailstones that pelt them.  And as I watch I think about God giving the land of Egypt hail for rain.  And I remember that only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail (Exodus 9:26).  I think about the video I saw just days before on which the woman’s demands, “How can you believe in a God who sends bad things to good people?!” and the man’s reply, “He’s not the one that knocks me down.  He’s the one that’s always there to help me when I fall.”  And I think again, no...no.  My God is the One who’s word the stormy wind fulfills (Psalm 148:8).  The One who reserves hail for the time of trouble and the day of battle and war (Job 38:23).  The One who smites with blasting and with hail to cause me to turn and to run to Him (Haggai 2:17).  And “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him (Job 13:15).  “In the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion” (Psalm 27:5). 

Our nanny, trembling, sidles up to the lone tree in the pasture, head down.  And I think about the Scapegoat who bore the battering of the hailstones of God’s eternal wrath that were due silly, selfish, sinful me.

Though hailstones will still hit me in this life, I know that they are sent to but drive me Home.  And when I’m there, safe in the glory that is Father’s House, these former things…they will not be remembered, nor come into mind (Isaiah 65:17).