***
When I finished praying that
prayer of relinquishing and trust, the sun came out. It was the first time in days I’d seen the
sun. The gloom of rain had lasted quite
long enough for my tastes and I welcomed the rays that shone through the
stained glass windows.
My gaze dropped to the floor as I
remembered the “slow and stop” message from the first week in the prayer
chapel. Much to my surprise, this week
the sun was so radiant that every color from the window melted into a pool on
the green slate floor. Red, yellow,
orange, blue, purple, green – my own rainbow covered the floor next to my pew.
Immediately I remembered my best
friend’s wedding almost four years earlier.
She lived about an hour north of me and I was the maid of honor in her
wedding. The last couple of weeks before
her wedding were filled with overtime at work, crash dieting for the spaghetti
strap dress, short nights, and long days.
Three days before her wedding I was so sick that I just hoped I could even
be at the wedding.
Not being a big fan of driving –
especially on interstates – I dreaded the drive north to her apartment with all
my wedding gear crammed in the back of my tiny Neon. As I left work the Thursday night before her
wedding day and made my way to the interstate entrance ramp, the skies poured
and darkness threatened to fall early. I
clutched the steering wheel at ten and two and prayed my way down the
unfamiliar road as semis zoomed past my compact car.
The rain slowed, then stopped,
and directly in front of me appeared a beautiful huge rainbow. I pried one hand from the wheel long enough
to feel around in my purse in the passenger seat and pull out the disposable
camera I’d brought to document the weekend.
I perched it on top of the steering wheel and snapped, hoping I’d caught
the rainbow.
When I made my scrapbook of her
wedding, I included the picture along with that story and this verse from
Genesis 9:17 – “This is a sign of the covenant I have established between me
and all life on earth.” Yes, my rainbow
from God. That weekend it had been God’s
promise to me that the weekend would be okay.
I wasn’t alone in my car, I would make it to my destination, the wedding
would be beautiful, and I would be well enough to be the maid of honor Lynnette
needed.
And as I sat in the chapel that
day, remembering God’s original covenant of love with Noah and His covenant of
love with me three and half years earlier, I sensed another covenant hiding in
the pool of color on the floor. God
would make good on His promise of being trustworthy. I could
trust Him to make me into a blessing of a wife.
I could trust Him to bring me
my partner. I could trust Him to write my love story. As He had been faithful to those who came
before me….as He had been faithful to me in the earlier days of my life…He
would continue to prove faithful.
How thankful I was that God led
me to Elizabeth’s
book to teach me how to become that wife for my husband. How thankful I was for a ruby ring to remind
me daily of that commitment to become all I could be for him. How thankful I was for Jeff’s time in writing
an e-mail to a sister-in-law he could have lashed out at in frustration. How thankful I was that I’d been prompted to
keep his words on that index card for such a time as this. How thankful I was for Eric and Leslie Ludy
and their books to light the way for a girl who didn’t quite know how to allow
God to work in her love life. And how
thankful I was for a rainy drive on an interstate three years earlier that gave
me an encounter with God that returned that day to bless me once again.
My pastor's words were so
true. When we commit Scripture to
memory, God will pull it out at just the right time. And He doesn’t stop with Scripture. Every experience. Every word comes back at the right moment and
brings His promise and His hope.
1 comment:
God ALWAYS keeps his promises and I'm so glad for rainbows to remind us of that.
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