ValueSpeak
A Weekly Column
By
RAINBOWS IN THE
The thing that bothers me about snowstorms is the
rainbows.
Or rather, the lack of rainbows.
This occurred to me this morning after spending an
hour scraping several inches of snow off of my driveway and sidewalks. For the third time. In 12 hours.
For those of you who don’t live in snowy climates
. . . well, imagine finishing mowing your lawn, and then looking back at where
you started mowing and seeing that it already needs to be mowed again.
And then, four hours later,
again.
And then the next morning when you wake up, again.
It’s been that kind of winter for us this year,
which is why I started thinking about rainbows.
The Bible tells us that the rainbow at the end of a rainstorm (or as it
says in the scripture, “my bow in the cloud”) is a symbol of God’s promise that
He will never again destroy the world by flood.
But He never said anything about snow, which today makes me wonder if we
should read something ominous into the fact that there are no rainbows at the
end of snowstorms.
Assuming, of course, that
snowstorms ever actually HAVE an end.
And yes, I know that the global warming folks will
be quick to point out that this is some sort of meteorological trick brought on
because the planet is actually heating up – honest, they wouldn’t kid us about
this – so therefore it snows more than any of us around here can remember. Now, I’m not a scientist – just ask Mr. Siddoway, my erstwhile high school science teacher, who
made it a habit to put away the Petrie dishes whenever I walked into the
lab. I just know that my back is sore
from lifting shovels full of globally warmed white stuff.
Which feels awfully cold to me.
So I’m looking for rainbows in the snow – if not
the covenanted kind, at least the kind that make it
all seem worthwhile. For example, the
easiest rainbow to spot on the snowy horizon can actually be seen coming out of
my kitchen faucet. We have water all
year round because we have hundreds of inches of snow in our mountains. This is especially meaningful this year
because we are coming out of several years of drought (that sound you just heard
was a hearty “HA!” from the global warming lobby). Shoveling snow – even two or three times a
day – seems like a small price to pay for a year’s worth of green lawns,
flushed toilets and long, hot showers.
Not to mention the cool water we will drink on
those globally warmed days.
I see another rainbow on my sore muscles (and no,
I didn’t go get tatted up in a sudden outburst of snow-induced madness). They
are sore because I’m actually using them instead of allowing them to atrophy
while sitting in front of the television set or the computer. I’m outside, breathing fresh air and
exercising muscles that desperately need the exercise. Evidently, that’s not a bad thing.
Who knew?
There’s another rainbow hovering over my memory of
a pleasant conversation I had with my 17-year-old son, Jon, as we worked
shoulder-to-shoulder clearing away the residue of last night’s storm. And another illuminating
the kindness of neighbors who refuse to be bound by property lines as they
shovel their way down the sidewalk.
And then there are others popping up all over snow country as
compassionate “Samaritans” pause to help strangers in icy distress.
Turns out there are rainbows all over the place out
there. You’ll see them in the harshest
winter blizzard, or even in the overwhelming pleasantness of a balmy day at the
beach. There are rainbows marking the
hidden blessings that life holds for all of us.
It’s just that sometimes we have to look pretty hard to find them.
And we have to use a snow shovel. Again and again and again.
# # #
— ©
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