Rainbow's End

It was on a rainy day early in 1977 in San Francisco. We were moving yet again, this time from Northern to Southern California, to a promised better job. It had been more than a year of challenges, of financial struggles, losses, moves. We'd gone from the midwest to the east coast to the west coast in a few months' time, and were far away from family and the familiar.

Though we were young and adventurous, the strain was taking a toll, and that dark, rainy day, even looking forward to the hope of better things, we were weary. Though we'd prayed for guidance and help, we were more than a little uncertain of what the future might hold and some days, though we believed in God's promise to be with us, still unsure of whether he was really guiding us or not.

Driving south in a drizzling rain in our battered but faithful old red Toyota station wagon, through a gloomy, gray industrial section of the city, staring bleakly at passing factories and fences, my husband, six-year-old son and I were feeling about as dull as the weather, when suddenly the sky broke a little and up ahead a rainbow appeared, bright and beautiful and very close, so close in fact that the end of the rainbow seemed to be resting on the highway itself just a mile or so ahead.

Now scientists will tell you that it's just not possible to reach the end of a rainbow. Raymond L. Lee, Jr. a Research Professor in the Mathematics and Science Division at the U.S. Naval Academy, says in Chapter 4 of “The Rainbow Bridge: A Field Guide to the Rainbow,” “Because the rainbow is an image, not an object, you can never reach or touch it.”

The rainbow page at the Franklin Institute’s “Resources for Science Learning” declares, ”You can never… actually reach the end of a rainbow, where a pot of gold supposedly awaits. As you move, the rainbow that your eyes see moves as well, because the raindrops are at different spots in the atmosphere. The rainbow, then, will always “move away” at the same rate that you are moving.”

But that day the rainbow didn't move away. As we drove closer, it stayed right there. Closer and closer, it still didn’t move. It got bigger and brighter. Finally we drove right into the end of the rainbow.

The rainbow’s light filled the inside of our car. We stared at ourselves and each other, awestruck with amazement and delight as we saw the colors of the rainbow flickering and dancing on our own skin and one another’s, coloring the air, an almost palpable presence, nearly alive. And then we drove out of it.

Whipping our eyes and necks around, we could still see the end of the rainbow on the road behind. Suddenly the day - and the future - seemed a whole lot brighter than it had before, and our hearts lighter and more peaceful.

There are others who've experienced a rainbow this way too. For the most part they're not scientists, and can't describe their experience in scientific terms. You won’t find them on university websites, but in blogs and forums, chat groups and social networking places. Invariably, when they try to describe what happened, they're scoffed at, or dismissed, argued with and told they must have experienced an illusion or delusion, that they simply couldn’t have seen what they say they saw, because science says it’s not possible to touch a rainbow.

But I know better, because I've touched a rainbow too. More than thirty years later, the memory is as bright and real as then.

Whenever I cover the sky with clouds and the rainbow appears, I will remember my promise to you ... Genesis 9:14-15