We saw the dark clouds and heard the thunder before radar confirmed that a “small” storm was moving in late yesterday afternoon. There was heavy rain, a brief strong wind and a bit of small hail. And then, just a few minutes after the rain ended, a strong burst of sunshine broke through.

Hoping that we might have a rainbow worth looking at, I took my camera phone outside to see if I could see one. Nope. Just dark stormy skies to the east and north and south and the sun glaring on drenched branches. There’s a surrealistic effect after a storm like that. Saturated colors, brilliant reflections, extreme contrasts.

One of my favorites is the way sycamore bark stands out so stark and white against a dark bruised sky. The contrast of leaves and green and that gleaming, bright bark against the blue-black clouds! Wow!

So, I took several pictures looking toward the east and then turned toward the west. With the sun shining straight toward me, it created a glare through the lens. So I moved into the shade of a small cluster of cedar trees to block the sun. I took some more pictures of the storm sky with some of those sinister clouds fringed with platinum from the sun’s bright light. Very nice, very nice…

Then, I looked down and noticed huge drops of collected rain dropping from the cedar branches. With the sun shining directly behind them, they looked like diamonds falling from the trees. I moved over to take some pictures of that. As I looked up into the branches, I saw a tiny burst of brilliant light reflected from a large drop of water still clinging to the cedar. As I moved my head ever so slightly to one side, the light turned red.

I moved into position for a closer shot, carefully adjusting the camera’s angle to catch the light just right, hoping it would catch what I was seeing. I also took a couple of brief video clips to show the motion of the branches in the breeze and the cascade of water droplets falling from them. In only a couple of minutes, clouds had moved back in, blocking out the sun. Photo session over…

Back in the house, away from the outside light, I began showing Randa the pictures. “No rainbow,” I admitted, “But, I did get some pretty neat pictures.” I slid from one shot to the other, starting with the pictures of the trees and clouds. Then, I got to the ones I’d taken of the cedar trees. In the lower light of the living room, I was astounded by what I could not see outside.

Instead of just the one droplet’s color I’d tried to catch, the camera had recorded hundreds of tiny, brilliant reflections. In dozens of colors: reds and pinks, lavenders and purple and blue, greens and aquas and white. The cedar looked like it had been prepped for Christmas! Hoping that I would not be disappointed by my effort to capture that one element I’d noticed, I was gratified to find that I’d taken pictures that exceeded my most optimistic expectations!

When we refuse to let disappointments ruin our day or our lives and we instead open our eyes and our hearts to what does appear before us, we can often find sights and experiences even better than our often quite limited expectations.

In other words, let’s focus on the day the Lord has made instead of the one we fantasized. And be glad in it.

H. Arnett
9/25/24