On the day of the Boston Marathon bombing...

I was on my run around a local fitness trail when I received the text from my husband,

"there's been a bombing in Boston".

And suddenly I have the same feeling, the same sort of words run through my mind, as I did when I visited Ghana for the first time.

"How can such filth and poverty coexist with the totally different life I live on

 the same small planet at the very same time?"

I'm running, the spring sun peeks out from behind puffy cumulus clouds, worship music plays through the ear buds I'm wearing, occasionally interrupted by the voice of my automated running coach.

Meanwhile, not only on the same small planet,

but in the same small country,

others just ran right into horror and devastation.

Suddenly I'm aware that while I'm breathing in and out, someone else is taking their last breath.

While I'm a wee bit irritated that I just had to mail our taxes with a check for money owed,

someone else is mourning with pain indescribable over the death of their child.

That evening we pick up four year old granddaughter to take her with us to see only grandson's,

her cousin's, baseball game.

In the car she tells us that her mama told her some people got hurt at a running race.

Her daddy runs marathons, and immediately I 

want to reassure her that nothing like that will ever happen to him.

But I keep quiet, and in typical four year old fashion, her attention quickly shifts to something else.

At the baseball game, we eat peanuts, (in the shell),  and Cracker Jacks because she knows the song

and thinks it's some sort of law of the universe that those two snacks must be eaten at a baseball game.

The whole evening seems an old-fashioned snapshot of a simpler time in America.

It seems so wholesome, so simple, so safe.

Suddenly the sky changes, gray clouds roll in, and a few random sprinkles turns into a downpour.

We run with four year old granddaughter for the car, her laughing at the rain and pushing the hood of her jacket off on purpose.

As we pull the car out of the ball park, we see two rainbows.

One is so bright and so clear that we can clearly see where the end of it touches the grass.

I see it and I remember the God who has made the heavens His throne and from there rules over everything.

I remember that He is keeping His eye on both the evil and the good.

I remember that He was sent to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord's favor has come,

and with it, the day of God's anger against their enemies.

I remember that one day,

 on this same small planet at the very same time,

our Redeemer will return,

and it will be the greatest day ever for some, 

but for the unrepentant wicked, a day of God's vengeance.

I remember that we're the ones who started this whole mess in His perfect, beautiful creation,

but that He's the One Who's going to make it all right again.

I remember, and I wait, and I long for it.

Still following,