I Like to Look for Rainbows...

While in Salt Lake City, I got up early on Saturday morning in hopes of getting some nice pictures of the Salt Lake Temple.  I was hoping that the early morning light would give me some really great highlights and shadows and that would translate into really interesting photographs and perhaps something I might want to watercolor.  My hotel was several blocks away, and I walked there early enough to be there when the sun came up.  I found a nice spot across from the church office building and waited for the sun.  But as the sky turned lighter my prospects did not look good.  The sky was blanketed with grey clouds, and I was worried that when the sun did come up over the Eastern mountains, the clouds would hamper any hopes of shadows.  I had time, so I decided to sit and wait, in hopes that the clouds might blow off.  While I waited, I pulled out my scriptures and started to read.  It started to rain, and I relocated myself under a large tree, reading my scriptures, periodically looking up to the east, to watch the sun making its ascent up over the mountains, hoping the clouds would part, and the sun would come out so that I could get my bright light and shadows that I had been hoping for.  As I read my scriptures, and tried to keep them out of the mist and sprinkles, the sun finally came up above the eastern hills.  But the clouds had thickened instead of blown off and I knew my hopes of great morning light on the temple were not to be.  Then I turned my head away from the rising sun that I had been watching and toward the temple.  What I saw there took my breath away!  There, curving perfectly over the house of the Lord, was a luminous rainbow!   I looked around to see if anyone was around to share the wonderful sight, but I was all alone.  This wonderful scene was a gift, just for me!  My heart skipped a beat as I grabbed my camera and took several pictures of it before it faded away into the mist, as suddenly as it had come.

I sat back down under the big tree as the rain began to fall more steadily.  The sun never peeked through the clouds again.  Soon there were a few people around, on their way to the temple and such.  As I sat there I was completely overwhelmed with what I had just experienced, and the gift the Lord had just given me.  I realized that I had come this morning really wanting something - really wanting to take some nice pictures of the Salt Lake Temple.  So I was looking for the sunlight, and the accompanying great light and shadows.  That was what I was hoping for, and I had been disappointed by the rain.  But the Lord had something different in mind for me - something so much better.  He sent me a rare and wonderful rainbow, curving perfectly over his house - a gift of beauty and light, but one that is only visible in the rain.  I had been keeping my eyes, and my hopes on the rising sun - hoping and praying that the light would come and the clouds would clear, and was feeling disappointed and despairing that it would not happen.  It wasn't until I turned to look at the temple, that I saw the rainbow.

What would have happened if I had kept my eyes on the sunrise and had never turned to see that temple when I did?  Surely I would have missed the rainbow all together.  I realized that there was a profound lesson for me here.  Sometimes we want something and hope and pray that we will get our desires.  But when the rainclouds hang overhead and threaten, and when the sprinkles start falling on our hopes and dreams, we think that the Lord had decided not to give us what we think we need and want.  This may be true, but he may not give us what we ask for because he has something better in mind for us, something greater than we would ever hope for or even imagine for ourselves.  I wanted bright morning sun, and he sent me a rainbow instead.  Most mornings there is usually bright morning sun on that temple.  I would certainly get my chance on another trip to Salt Lake.  But a perfect rainbow curving gracefully over the temple was a rare and beautiful gift - something I could never have planned .  Even a professional photographer could not have planned it like this.  It made for a beautiful (albeit amateur) picture, and an even lovelier memory.  I knew at that moment that the Lord loves me.  ME!  This rainbow was a tender mercy of a loving father for his imperfect, yet beloved daughter.  The spirit bore witness of his love for me at that moment.

In life, we have challenges and problems, and we think we know what we need to make things better - if the Lord would just send us what we think we need.  But the Lord who loves us and knows us often has something else in mind for us, something infinitely more wonderful, and often those blessing are to be given only in the rainy, stormy moments of our lives.  If I had gotten my bright morning sun, there would have been no rainbow. 

 Rain is necessary for any rainbow - and so is a ray of light.  When life is stormy and rainy, we don't need clear skies, but merely a ray of light, to have a miracle.  

I thought how wonderful it was that I didn't see the rainbow while looking for the immediate sunrise, but only when I turned away from the sun and looked at the temple.  What powerful symbolism!  When we keep our eyes on the horizon, looking for the answers to our prayers in the here and now, we may miss the really best blessings that the Lord is sending us.  We might even get bitter that the sun is not rising as fast as we think it should, and that there are still too many clouds in the way when it does come.  But when we stop watching and waiting for the immediate sunrise, and instead look toward the temple, and the eternal perspective that it gives us, that is when we see the blessings - the rainbows in the rain.  

Some blessing require the perspective of the temple to be seen for what they really are.  The primary song says "I like to look for rainbows, when ever there is rain..."  Well, I have been reminded that when life gives us rain, we can look for rainbows in the temple.