TODAY is a promise.

The past couple of days haven’t been too great for me, and TODAY didn’t start out much different. To add to the list of things that have gone wrong (one of them being a minor hit-and-run incident which cracked the back bumper of my car), I had some pretty hurtful accusations hurled at me this morning. Although it was really just a misunderstanding, the accusations were stuck in my head, doing damage all the live-long day. To add to this personal and relational aggravation, my rent was raised (despite the fact that I’ve been getting less and less hours at work). Practically, emotionally, physically I felt affronted.

All day I tried to keep my mind off of the little things that were slowly converging and becoming one BIG gigantic mess. You know how it can be when one little thing after another little thing piles up so high that you can’t see above it, so high that you feel you might fall apart at the slightest suggestion of one more little bad thing.

It felt like a flood of “little things” and I was sinking.

As I was driving around Newport News, I remembered a promise in Romans 8:28. In that passage it says that all things work together for good to those who love God.

Although there are many little things that I haven’t seen “working together” for any kind of good yet, I felt some peace in that promise. It is a PROMISE after all. I kept thinking that over and over. It’s a promise, a promise, a PROMISE.

Later TODAY, I stepped outside and saw something amazing: a rainbow.

You’re probably thinking… LAME! Honestly, if I hadn’t been there, I might have thought the same thing too. But when you see a rainbow live and in person… I mean, it’s just breathtaking.

And it wasn’t even just the rainbow. The first things I noticed when I stepped out of my apartment, was the odd distribution of light. Before I even saw the rainbow, I noticed that half of the sky was almost completely dark and full of storm clouds, while the other was bright and sparsely dappled with full white clouds.

Then I saw the rainbow between the two.

It wasn’t until I got in my car and started to drive that I realized what was happening. The sun was projecting the rainbow onto the canvas of the dark clouds. If it weren’t for the storm and its clouds, you wouldn’t have been able to see the rainbow at all.

I kept driving, and eventually turned so all I saw was the side of the sky that was bright and beautiful. The storm was behind me.

And I thought about God’s promise.

One of the first promises ever made was God’s promise to Noah. God promised life instead of death, protection instead of destruction, mercy instead of punishment, peace instead of torment. And He gave the rainbow as His signed contract.

This might sound crazy, but I truly believe that rainbow was for me today. I felt God whisper in my ear. He was saying, I promise life instead of death. I promise that all things will work together for good. I promise I won’t let you drown in the flood of little things. I promise that the storm you see now will be the canvas for a masterpiece, a masterpiece that only I can create. I PROMISE.