The Tears of God

Last night the sky opened up. I was asleep in my bed when I heard the loud rumble that indicates thunder. But it was the bright electric flash of lightning that actually opened my eyes. It burst through the blinds in my bedroom, and through my closed lids and I almos gasped with how sharply I was taken out of sleep. But then I calmed down and still dreary I watched the storm through my window. 

Because of the blinds I could only see the sharp blue flash illuminate pieces of the sky and then recede into darkness. The shadows in my room unfurled, their jagged edges stretching across my walls, climbing along my ceiling and then folding back into the blanket of black. 

When I was a small child I was told that the rain were God's tears. I didn't understand. Why would God be crying so much? With selfish, childlike understanding I thought He was crying for my pain, when I got a scrape or bumped my knee. Then as I got a little older I believed that His tears were not just for me, but for the pain of others, the world. I couldn't help but think, God must be sad a lot, it feels like He cries all the time. 

Now as I lay awake watching, listening, I recall my childhood thoughts. I wondered what I would have thought if I had experienced this storm when I was young. This was more than mere sorrowful raindrops falling to the earth. This felt...angry. As if God were opening up the heavens to scream at us all. Maybe he was angry about the wars, about our descent into the comfort of our ignorance and intolerance. Maybe He would scream at us to look at ourselves, to see that we have divided ourselves based on the flimsiest attributes that make us different, rather than the majority of similarities uniting us all. Maybe this was a warning. 

Or a plea. 

Lightning flashed in quick succession. I watched blue crack through black. I watched the sky brighten for the second before darkening. I thought to myself, eons of darkness crumble with just a flicker of light to shine through it. Thunder rumbled, I could swear I heard a cry beneath it.