Children

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It had just finished raining and pouring awfully hard. There were still raindrops coming down. I looked over to the east and saw the most wonderful series of two rainbows I have ever seen. I was saddened that I didn’t have my camera. I sat and watched them for a long time. One was large and seemed to stretch on forever – it was very bright. The one in front of it was smaller and not as brilliant.

“Mommy? Who makes rainbows?”

“God does, son.” I answered.

“Why does he make them Mommy?”

“Well, he makes them to let us know that He cares about us.”

“He does?”

“Yes, he sure does honey. Let me tell you a story about where rainbows come from. A very long time ago, there was a lot of rain. So much rain that it flooded the whole Earth.”

“The whole Earth? What happened to all the people?”

“Most of the people and animals on Earth died. They had been bad and weren’t listening to God. So God asked Noah to build a big boat, called the Ark, to carry a lot of animals and a couple of people.”

“That would have to be a really big boat Mommy.”

“Yes, it was. And Noah was building it on dry land and not near any water. All of his friends thought he was crazy. But Noah had faith in what God asked him to do.”

“Did they laugh at Noah?”

“I don’t know son, I imagine they may have. I might have laughed too if I had lived in that time. Noah finished the boat and then God called Noah to start to load animals on it. Two of a kind they came, one boy and one girl.”

“A boy and a girl? Is that so they could make new baby animals?”

“Yes, that’s right. God wanted to be able to make new animals for the Earth. After all the animals were on the boat and Noah’s family was on, God started making the rain fall. It rained every day and every night for forty days.”

“Wow, forty days, that’s over a month. I bet Noah didn’t need any water to drink.”

“Nope, I’ll bet he didn’t,” I laughed in spite of myself. “The entire earth was covered with water. You couldn’t see land anywhere. Then the rain stopped.”

“When it stopped could Noah get off the boat?”

“No, he couldn’t – there was too much water. He would send out a bird everyday to see if it came back with a branch. Many days he sent the bird out and it returned without a branch.”

“I’ll bet that bird got tired.”

“I bet he did too. One day he came back with an olive branch. Then Noah knew that the waters were going down and soon they could get out of the boat.”

“I wonder if Noah felt like I do in the spring time. I just wanna go outside and play but it’s too wet to be outside for long.”

“Yes, I am sure he was ready to get off the boat. The animal’s too.”

“Mommy, do you think the animals behaved on the boat?”

“That’s a good question son. I don’t know.”

“I sure hope they behaved. That’s a long time to be on a boat, especially when they had never been on one before.”

“Okay son. Look, the rain has stopped. Do you want to go outside with me and play in the puddles?”

“Really? We can go and play in the puddles? Yippee, let’s go.”

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