Until the Coming of My Relief

I had always owned cats until one day, years after the last cat’s demise, I decided I needed a dog. Understanding cats is easy: basically they believe they are better than humans.

But when your cat decides to anoint you with his love, he might perch behind your head on your chair and lay his loyal little head on your neck as you read, passing his power of love and comfort to you.

Or he might not.

Dogs are different, especially little dogs. Dogs dance excitedly just because you are near, bark happily when you talk about the park and mourn loudly when you slink out the back door.

I take my dog to the park often; her little legs prance and her wiry body jumps like a puppet at a circus performance; she leaps dramatically, tethered by her leash, to chase the Canada geese who weigh more than she. I can only guess how she would react if she actually caught up with one.

It’s a four mile walk, though, and sometimes when we pass through the shade, she lies down in the grass, resolutely unmoving, staring at me as if to say here it is cool; there’s no reason to go farther.

This is when I know she needs to be carried, so I pick her 6 pound body up in my arms and walk a ways until she wiggles to get down again.

Because I am unfamiliar with dogs, it took me a few years to understand that when she reaches up to lick my cheek as I carry her, she is kissing me in appreciation.

A tiny kiss, unnoticed, mistaken.

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We were driving from Ohio to South Carolina and the weather turned frightening, swirling black clouds churned and twisted just above our heads. The line between calm sky and ominous cloud was distinctly drawn; we drove on into it and thus we became part of the storm.

I have never seen anything like what followed the next hour. In and out of black clouds, rainbow after rainbow stretched across the horizon. They were everywhere; every turn we took, every tree we passed shimmered with prisms of color. We could not escape the great shafts of light.

Usually a rainbow is so fleeting that, if you're lucky, you can snap a shot before it disappears. I had my camcorder then-before phones-and recorded much of what we saw that day, but recorded images are never like actually being there, driving into the rainbows.

The excitement that accompanies witnessing a natural phenomenon such as this is so native and pure that it cannot be replicated.

Weathering the turbulent years of life, which are such a mixture of hot and cold air, sunshine and storm, tears and laughter, you have to keep your eyes open, though, to make sure you see the rainbow.

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I was ambling my way through Job and came to 14: 14; the Lexham translation reads this way, “If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my compulsory service I will wait, until the coming of my relief.”

The Hebrew interprets compulsory service as service in an army, or a host of military personnel fighting in a war.

My relief can be interpreted from the Hebrew as a change of clothing or a military replacement.

My relief.

That is, the changing of bodies as a change of clothing, from fighting in this life as a soldier, choosing one side or the other.

Sometimes I cannot see that I am in a war, a daily battle to transcend the ugly, to do both well and good, to honor the Father more than the temporal.

It helps to know, I think, that my service here is not only compulsory, but also temporary.

And every so often, I become aware that God has spared me from some harm or grief or despair.

Now and then He reaches down and silently, secretly both carries me and kisses me quietly on the forehead, even if I am not paying attention, impatient person that I am.

The rainbow is a covenant from God, a promise to never destroy the earth again with floods. God does not break His covenants, though mankind struggles to keep any one promise from hour to hour.

As joyful or agonizing as it may be, if this life is my compulsory service I ask but one thing.

Drive me into the rainbow.

************** Sanibel Rainbow acrylics on board, resin