Turn the corner

Take a look at this picture. Can you see it? I'm not sure if you can or not. On the way back from lunch today, I saw this cloud formation. Can you see the color in it? It was a perfectly sunny day with some white clouds. In this particular cloud, there was a strange rainbow -- I have never seen anything like it before.

I was hoping to get a good picture of it was I was walking toward the building, but once I got out of the car and starting walking, it was gone. Both of the images above were taken from the car, so I wondered if it had something to do with the polarization in my windshield. Silly me, I walked back to the car and drove it through the parking lot again -- nope, gone.

Sometimes I think finding God is like that. We try every trick in the book. We use strange filters, particular rooms, special prayers. We do everything we can to get close to him.

In the Foster Prayer book I am reading, he tries to answer the question of how to do a Prayer of Tears -- that prayer in which we offer our repentance to God. His first step to suggest in the process is to "ask." Ask God to bring you to repentance, because we certainly cannot get there on own.

We try and try to make it happen, but all of our tricks -- getting back in the car, looking through sunglasses -- none of it works. But sometimes, we turn the corner, and there he is. Like that rainbow. Unexpected and breathtaking.

Images: Rainbow in clouds (click on image to see better, and put on your sunglasses). Open door at church during JesusQuest.