My First Rainbow(s)

From Mia Cope

South of us, big storms have dumped buckets and buckets of rain and rivers are over-flowing and towns are flooding. The same thing happened last year and many people were caught in the rising waters and did not survive. From what I have seen on the news, the early warning systems worked better this time and, while many people were forced out of their homes or were marooned by the high water, many folks and their pets were able to move to safety. We’re saying prayers for everyone.

Meanwhile, here in Abilene we’ve eked out 2/10 of an inch of rain. But in so doing, something wonderful happened! After a short rainfall two nights ago, I was given my first rainbow! And not only that, but it was a double rainbow, so, in a way, I got my first two rainbows!

Daddy was so excited for me that he immediately came inside and begin researching rainbows on the interweb. The following is a very short version of his interminably long report.

There are seven distinct types of rainbows. Daddy did not know this and he spent a lot of time explaining each one. Because I am not prone to the same tendency to go on and on and on about things, let me just list them:

1. Primary Rainbow

2. Double Rainbow

3. Multiple Rainbows

4. Supernumerary Rainbows

5. Circular Rainbows

6. Monochrome (Red) Rainbows

7. Moonbows (Lunar Rainbows)

I was just excited to see a rainbow. But in truth, I was presented with a double rainbow. First, there is the primary rainbow. That’s the brighter one that’s lower in the sky in the picture above. Primary rainbows appear when sunlight is reflected through raindrops and the resulting prism effect paints the sky with bands of color, starting with red on the outside and violet on the inside.

The double rainbow appears when sunlight is reflected twice within the raindrops. The secondary rainbow is fainter and has its colors reversed. The space between the primary and secondary rainbows looks darker than the sky around it and is called Alexander’s Band. Daddy confided that he thought that Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a better name. Apparently, scientists disagree and I’ve urged daddy to keep his thoughts to himself.

Last night at bedtime, I was still pretty excited about my rainbows and Daddy asked if I wanted to hear the story of the first one. Of course, I did. It’s a pretty exciting adventure story about a man named Noah and how God told him to build a big boat¹ because a storm was coming and God was issuing a flood warning for a wide area — which turned out to be the entire planet.

Anyway, many years later, Noah finished the boat and sure enough it started to rain. A bunch of weather-watching animals and birds climbed aboard² and Noah, his three sons, and their wives hopped on. It rained for forty days and nights.³ The boat floated around for a long time and got stuck on a mountain-top when the flood waters began to dry up.

When the animals and the people got off the boat, they were thankful. And God said, “Look up in the sky! That rainbow is my promise that there will never be such a flood again.” And there never has been.

But Daddy and I agreed that there are a boat-load of smaller natural disasters — floods, earthquakes, fires, political party conventions, to name a few — and that we should constantly be in prayer about the people and animals impacted. And we should ever be thankful that God knows how to shoot sunlight through raindrops so that we can have rainbows and remember his promise.

1. God called the big boat an “ark.” I find that to be a very odd conflation of two dog words — a cross between an “arf” and a “bark.” I’m not sure why God did that since it’s really not a shorter, easier to say, word. If he had told Noah to build a “superhumongous floating zoo enclosure,” I would understand how “ark” might be easier for Noah and his family to talk about the project. But, then again, “boat” seems easy, too. Daddy says that it’s okay not to understand everything about God. Daddy says that’s where “faith” comes from. It was past Daddy’s bedtime when that came up, thankfully.

2. Apparently, the fish were on their own.

3. You should note that God predicted this storm accurately decades before it happened. And we are still amazed these days with doppler radar.