Tea, Book, Cat

Bang!  The lightning smacks the sky right above our heads.  There are few times in my life I've experienced lightening and thunder in perfect synchronization before, and even fewer times that I've experienced either lightening or thunder in Taiwan; it's always raining and never storming here.  Just as the lightening strikes, there's a heavy sheet of rain that starts pouring down on us, and the palm trees start dancing madly.  My scooter helmet doesn't have a visor and the rain drives at a steep angle into my eyes.  I close them and wait until I've been driven safely home.

The rain stops as quickly as it started, so that when we get home we are soaked and there's no longer any precipitation to blame it on.  I change into PJ's, grab a book, and heat up some tea.  Although I had planned to travel to an island during these last few days off, I don't mind the storm.  I am no different from when I was a child and the electricity went out:   we would light candles, watch the storm from the porch, play games and hear stories.  It was an adventure in its own right, and I was all excitement.

So I sit and read and sip tea, warm and dry with a kitten on my lap, and I think of how blessed I am.  God has been so good to me here in Taiwan, just like He was good to me back in America.  Just like I've seen Him bless people here and there, good and bad, believers and unbelievers ("the sun shines on the godly and ungodly").  He does so much more, far beyond what a "good God" needs to do.  What I mean is I think He doesn't need to be this good to us, He just wants to be.  God would still be "good" even if we are starving on the streets, even if like Job we lose everything and don't know the reason why.  Anything more than that is simply His bountiful grace.  Am I right?  Either way, I know I owe all this to God.  So thank you, God, for being so good to all of us!

Don't be concerned for me; Chiayi is a safe distance from the coast and our biggest threat is flooding.  But please pray for the people on the coast, as well as in Japan who will get one of the typhoons after us.