God Speaks ...

After dinner last night, we spent the time in our usual way -- outside in the back yard. Steve and Rosa (my oldest brother and his wife) had come for dinner at my parents' house, and their son, Steven Henry, spent most of the playing with my kids on their new slide (which repaid itself in just a few hours!). All day long severe, wild, strong thunderstorms were predicted, yet they never came. Finally, at about 7:30 p.m. the sky started to change -- from blue, to gray, and then to an eerie yellow. The thunder got louder and louder, and finally at the first strikes of lightening, we ran indoors. Good timing -- it was bedtime, anyway.

As my kids were getting out of the tub from their Saturday evening bath, the phone rang. "Look outside!" exclaimed my mom. "There's a double rainbow!"

A double rainbow?! We threw some pj's on Grace, while Aidan just carried his clothes in a state of au natural, and we went onto the front porch. And there, set against an odd gray sky, was the most amazing rainbow I have ever seen. Not only was it indeed a double rainbow -- one faint arc set above a most brilliant arc of color I had never seen before in my life -- but it also stretched from one point of the horizon all the way to the other. A full, double rainbow so incredibly brilliant that it looked like God had a great time with His Heavenly Crayolas. It was truly, indescribably, amazingly beautiful.

Don snapped a few pictures, but of course a dinky digital camera would never, ever do justice to the sight before us. Yet here's a mediocre representation of what we saw. Don suggested I try piecing them together in Photoshop to get an idea of its hugeness, so I tried ... it's a bit dorky but you get the idea. It was stunning.

You can see the faint double arc on top

Suddenly Grace broke into that (annoying) children's song, "Arky Arky" ... how perceptive of her! She even made up her own lyrics about the rainbow before us. Indeedm Noah's ark Revisited. Is this what Noah saw? What a sight, and what a revelation. No wonder he said it was a sign from God, a promise from the heavens. God reveals Himself in ways far, far beyond our understanding ... and as we stood there, we felt small.

It was awesome.