Another November 22nd

The rainbow smiled.


There's a scientific explanation. And then, there's a story...

We'd lost the heart of our family a few days before. Her funeral had been earler that morning. And we'd gathered together afterward.

Over her last few months of life she'd left a few personal touches around her house. I found one them just as I found myself alone in the bathroom asking, "What are we supposed to do without you?"

She had left an answer ahead of time in the form of a plaque:

So that your joy may be complete,
love one another as I have loved you.
-- John 15:11

That's when someone called, "Come outside. You've gotta see this!"

And as we looked toward the heavens, the rainbow smiled.

There were other witnesses, and other interpretations... But that sense of "you've got your answer, and your mission," is the one I took away five years ago today, and the one which helped me past Chapter 11 of John and the Bible's shortest sentence: "Jesus wept."

CZA photo by Charlie Harvey, Oxford, UK