Rainbow Promises

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby ...

God promised Noah that he would never again engage in terrorist activities like wiping out all of humanity. In Genesis 9 God must be forgetful because he tells Noah, "Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures."

It's a funny beginning for such a beautiful thing.

God needed a reminder to not drown us all in a flood.

It also makes me wonder about tsunamis. A flood is starting and then the rainbow appears reminding God to not do it so its confined to one geographic area?

These things ran through my mind as I raced home through the marshes yesterday and was witness to one of the most spectacular rainbows I've ever seen.

Cars stopped in the middle of the Bull River Bridge to gawk and take pictures. Though I was in a hurry, I didn't mind. It was a stunning sight, stretching from the waters of the Intercostal Waterway on one side and seemingly ending on top of my house on Tybee Island.

I was rushed because the first ever Tybee Gay Days were taking place and I was picking up Sarah to meet the Carnival of Friends at a "White Party," fundraisers for AIDS research.  Everyone wears white because it "stands for purity. White is elegant, non-political, noon-combative and people just look plain beautiful."

Of course on Tybee this reasoning was butchered.

"If it's whites only," Johnny O explained, "I'm not going. That's racist."

"I look terrible in white," Cheryl said.

"I only have white shorts and I'm not wearing them," my son Jeremy confessed.

Nevertheless we were all going and I was driving back from Savannah when the rainbow appeared in

the sky stopping everyone driving to or from Tybee dead in their tracks.

Of course the rainbow flag is the symbol for Gay Pride and I was speeding back to Tybee Gay Days and God decides this is an excellent time to place a rainbow in the sky so stunningly spectacular that people are stopping to take notice.

Long ago it was a reminder that people will survive, regardless of how high the water rises. I couldn't help but believe that God was using it again as a promise that people, regardless of their sexuality, are finally free and their celebration can begin.

And last night that's precisely what we did.