Rainbows are for Real

It was my daughter-in-law Sarah who suggested it. Realizing we were coming up on my husband's birthday a year-and-a-half after his death, she thought it would be fun to remember him by dressing in support of his favorite baseball team and going out to eat his favorite food. The men in the family were all busy with another activity that night; it was up to us girls to celebrate on our own. We donned our best Cincinnati Reds baseball gear and were in the car driving to a nearby barbecue joint, when I suddenly noticed the look of the sky. It had been on and off cloudy all day, but a just-passed thunderstorm left dark clouds in front of us but sunshine now spilling all around us.

“It's a rainbow sky!”, I said with some excitement, noting that conditions were just right at that moment for the appearance of a beautiful bow. “Everybody keep an eye out for rainbows, and holler if you see one!” Just as I said that, I looked to my left and spotted a multi-colored arch outside my driver's side window! “THERE'S ONE!” I fairly shouted, and we all ooh-ed and aah-ed over it as we drove. A minute later it was suddenly gone with the shifting light and cloud formations, and we talked about how easy it is to miss them completely. Almost to the restaurant, though, we suddenly saw another. “Two in one day!” I exulted. “That's amazing!” We got to the restaurant and were enjoying our meal together, when suddenly a customer at another table spotted yet another rainbow out the front windows of the building. It was so pretty, bold and distinct, that dinner patrons left their tables and headed outside to take a picture of it. My granddaughter Chloe was sent to do the same. There was even a fainter secondary rainbow outside the first, making this third vision the most extraordinary yet.

Three in one day! My heart overflowed and a smile split my face every time I thought about it. And yet I still didn't get it...until while again marveling over the sightings on our way home, Sarah said, “You know, that was Jim... saying hi.” Suddenly it hit me. Of course that's what it was! And then I burst out laughing at the thought of how frustrated my husband would be at having to send THREE rainbows before we got the message! I could just picture him seated next to the Almighty and saying helplessly, “They're just not getting it, God! We're running out of daylight here! What are we going to do?” And so they sent the double whammy, hoping we'd finally get the point. And when we did, the laughter... so like my husband to always leave me with a smile on my face and a laugh in my heart.

Jim didn't send any more rainbows that day... he didn't need to; we finally got the message. But God simply never stops... and I wonder if He doesn't likewise get a little frustrated when we repeatedly miss the messages of His love that He lays before us in a million different ways as we go about our days. He placed the first bow in the sky as an act of love and a promise that He would never again let floods destroy us. No wonder on stormy days in life we still lift our eyes to the skies and look for a sign of His presence and His love. Rainbow skies just mean that God's eyes are on you... you are loved more than you can imagine, and safe in the shelter of His grace.

“I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth...Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.”

(Genesis 9:13,15 NIV)

 

Love Letters

I’d finally reached the end of a late-night shift made even longer by the need to do my own grocery shopping at the end of it, and headed out to the far corner of the parking lot where I’d left my car many hours earlier. Wearily I popped open the trunk and loaded the grocery bags into the back of the vehicle, slamming the lid down when I was through. My eyes lifted to the back window of the car and then I literally jumped in surprise! The words “Love you” were written across the glass in white shoe polish! Alone in the dark with nobody but God to see or hear me, I suddenly smiled and even laughed out loud as the midnight sunlight of a friend’s thoughtfulness broke through the gloomy fog surrounding me. Happy once more, I began texting my thanks to her almost before even closing the car door.

It got me to thinking about what messages we spell out with the letters we’ve been given.

Just days earlier my son had purchased a Samsung Galaxy Tab and invited me to play the Words With Friends application, which is the game of Scrabble in tablet form. I was to start the game off and waited expectantly for the seven letters I would be given to work with to pop up on the screen. When they did so my eyebrows rose in surprise, as spelled out perfectly in the middle of the group of tiles was a four-letter word that I wouldn’t let come out of my mouth, much less set down on a game board!

I wish I could say that I didn’t first tally up the points I could’ve accumulated from using it before discarding the notion completely. And suddenly it occurred to me that we do the exactly the same thing in life. Almost unconsciously we weigh our options in delivering our messages. Too often we exaggerate the details slightly to make a better story, lower our standards slightly to raise our standing in someone‘s sight… in short, ignore our convictions somewhat in order to score a little higher in the game of life. There’s a ten-letter word for that, and it’s spelled compromise. God would so much rather that we choose to play well than that we come out on top.

Choices matter in the area of communication because we carry the words we’ve been given around with us. They have the power to bless us or curse us for years after they’ve been delivered. I was grateful that the rain had stopped long enough for me to see message on my car before it got washed away, and I carefully parked it in the garage when I got home to preserve its presence for as long as I could. The next day as I drove around town I would smile all over again each time I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw love beaming back at me from the back window. I’ve tucked similar messages in the pages of my journal to bless me all over again when I look back on them at some later date. But too often we carry the destructive messages that have been communicated to us around with us as well, reliving the hurt of those moments each time we look back in time.

It’s amazing to consider that we can make a difference in this world, one word at a time. So it’s important what words we choose to use. As I was considering my options in the opening word of my game with my son, I realized that I held another letter in my hand that would change the four-letter word I wouldn’t say into a five-letter word that I could play. One letter made the unacceptable suddenly acceptable.

One sacrifice did the same for me spiritually. And now the life that Jesus gave on my behalf influences the choices I make towards others…especially in the area of verbal communication. I have received love; surely now I ought to give love away. Suddenly the message on my car that was originally just a kind thought from a friend became a directive from God.

Yet surely we can go beyond simply being verbally kind to one another. There’s no greater way to spell out a message of blessing than to tell somebody about the love of God that has made hope and help and Heaven available to them once more.

My friend told me later that she almost changed her mind about writing on my car because she thought I might be angry. And sometimes we are hesitant to share what’s in our hearts for that very reason. We fear rejection. Yet we never know who may desperately need to receive a “love you” message from God at any moment in time.

One letter. One Life. One Love.
Pass it on.

“’Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’ Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’”
(Isaiah 6:5-6 NIV)

The Middle Matters

Acronyms abound in our high-speed society that has little time or patience for full word phrasing. Caught up as I am in the whirlwind pace of life in today’s world, I’ve succumbed to inventing several of my own to use when communicating with those I love. Thus most messages to my sons end with the four-letter “YMLY”, which stands for Your Mother Loves You and is a fitting end to anything I happen to say.

Lately I’ve noticed that this habit has caught on with other family members, and its use is continually expanding. Messages written on the white board in the kitchen now end with a series of capital letters that identify the author, and more attention is usually given to deciphering the code at the end of the note than is directed to the message itself. A recent posting to my son was written in handwriting that clearly belonged to my husband, Jim. But did the “YFPFF” sign-off at the end stand for Your Forgetful Parent Feels Foolish?… Yesterday’s Frisbee Players Fling Farther?… or maybe Young Freeloaders must Pay For Food? Wrong on all counts, it was eventually translated into Your Father Plays Fantasy Football…with a healthy “DUH!” at the end for emphasis. It’s simply become a game we play amongst ourselves to add a little laughter to the day.

But communication is not always a laughing matter, especially when the message comes from God. Suddenly it’s important that we get it right. God is the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last… and suddenly I remembered an email that circulated on the internet a few years ago that claimed that words with rearranged spelling were legible as long as the first and the last letters were in the correct position. It read as follows:

Aoccdrnig to rescheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

(Do you smell smoke? The spell-checker on this computer just went into overdrive!)

There are some who would suggest that the same is true of our spiritual experience in this world, that if we have a beginning with God somewhere in life (our salvation experience) and end our physical existence here on earth in a right relationship with Him, that the intervening years are of little importance in the grand scope of things. Yet I’m a firm believer that the middle of our spiritual lives matters to God.

It’s in those middle years that God speaks through us and our testimony is written on His behalf. Therefore we need to live our lives in those years in a way that leaves no doubt about God’s message of love, salvation, and His desire to walk with us hand in hand. How exactly that message is spelled out will vary with the individual, according to the gifts and talents each has been given, but it’s imperative that we don’t leave its meaning to chance or confuse those reading it with actions that inconsistent with the thoughts we are trying to convey. We don’t want people to have to guess at what God is trying to say.

It’s interesting that further analysis of the way we interpret misspelled words revealed that people had a more difficult time recognizing a word when letters were moved several positions out of place, instead of just one or two. Multi-syllable words were harder to read with misspellings than shorter ones and readers were slower to get the meaning of a sentence under these conditions.

Isn’t it interesting that the same can be said of us? The farther we move away from our spiritual center, the more difficult it is for others to read our message. Likewise we risk losing it altogether when we make it too complicated. The love of God is easiest to understand when simply expressed and underlined with a consistent lifestyle.

My messages to my kids always end with my signature sign-off, but it turns out that God’s messages to His could be signed in a 4-letter acronym, as well…simply “LOVE“.

It doesn’t get any easier to understand that that.

“For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,”

(1 John 3:11 NKJV)

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Hudek