Many times I view God’s blessings as the spring flowers poking out of the ground, the rainbow in the sky, or the sun shining down on a beautiful summer day on the beach.  But we tend to forget the things that come before the flowers, the rainbow and the sunshine: rain.  Sometimes the rain is light and misty.  Other times it is a downpour with cracks of thunder and bolts of lightning.  The dark comes before the morning, the night before the day, just as the storm comes before the reward.  Yet it’s not just the product that we should view as the blessings of God.  The rain beforehand is just as important, if not more important, than the flowers poking through the ground.  In fact, for the beautiful flowers to grow or a rainbow to appear in the clouds, it must rain.  Rain is what feeds the resulting beauty, and darkness must come before the dawn.  The trials, the sufferings, the hardships, the things we don’t understand in this life – those turn out to be the real blessings of God.  They bring us closer to Him, closer to His purpose for us, and makes the dawn that much brighter, the flowers that much more beautiful, and the rainbow a more poignant promise.