Blog 3523 – 06.27.2025
“I’ve been hearing some bad talk about rain…”
One of my favorite Sesame Street skits that I remember watching with my daughter Emily when she was three, had a black man in a suit sitting behind a desk making a political commercial. He began with the lines, “I’ve been hearing a lot of bad talk about rain. Listen, folks, we’ve got to get behind rain.” The speaker went on to innumerate many of the positive aspects of rain trying to dispel the bad rap and bad rep that many folks buy into about rain.
Emily loved that skit and so did I for we both loved rain – watching it and playing in it. For Emily’s mom on the other hand rain was just another of her many phobias (fears) that made her a prisoner in her own apartment. I remember once that she did not step outside of it for over eighteen months.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said during the Great Depression in one of his uplifting radio talks to the nation, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Fear is an irrational response intended by the enemy of our souls, ego – the great Satan- to paralyze, imprison, and limit our lives. One definition of word Satan is “accuser of the brethren.” Jesus said to his disciple Peter once, “Get thee behind me Satan” when after sharing with his disciples his plan to enter Jerusalem where he knew he would be taken prisoner by the Jewish authorities and handed over to the Romans to be crucified for the heresy of claiming to be God, Peter had tried to dissuade him from going into Jerusalem. Jesus went on to say to Peter, “Thou savoriest not the things of God but of man.”
Peter was afraid, he thought things were spinning out of control. His fight or flight response was firing wildly. In one Gospel account Peter whacks off the High Priest’s servant’s ear with a sword as the servant is at the head in line those who came to arrest Jesus and take him to be tried and crucified, well right behind the traitor Judas anyway. Jesus’ response to Peter’s bold move according to the story is to say to him “Put away your sword” and to miraculously reattach the servant’s ear. Incredible!
But back to the irrational fear of rain. In the Sesame Street skit the politician’s pleas, “Listen folks we’ve got to get behind rain” makes sense to me and rain lovers everywhere. It reminds me of a little boy’s prayer that I heard more than once, “Thank you, God, for the sunshine and thank you for the rain, and for all the pretty flowers.” Rain gets a bad rap I think when all it does is get you wet. Well, even the sunshine will burn you if you stay out in it too long.
Another line from a Bible verse comes to mind, “All things are ours to enjoy.” I leave you with that encouraging word and may we all learn to appreciate the sunshine and the rain.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Neil Sedaka – Laughter In The Rain (1974)
theencouragingword 