The weather has lost its mind. To go from mid-80s last week to the low-40s in the span of a few hours has to be a clerical error, right? Surely the weather department in heaven just made a mistake, and meant to make it 70s and above for the rest of Spring but hit the 40s button instead on accident.

That’s what I’m running with anyway. But that’s life in central Illinois, I suppose. Just like everyone’s grandma used to say, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a day.” Except in this case I am pretty sure everyone likes sunny and 82, and the waiting of a day just made things worse. Thanks for nothing, grandma.

But as you know, when the temperature changes so swiftly like that, it always brings a storm with it. Strong winds, heavy rain, and dark clouds roll in fast. Sometimes it’s over in a flash, and the only thing left is a wet driveway and a drop of 30 degrees in temperature. Sometimes it takes longer, but the effects are the same. Huge drop in temperature and a grumpy, chilly, and allergy-riddled Matt O’Dell, sulking in the corner of his house.

But when it happened in the middle of last week, something was different. My family decided to pile in the van for the first time in days and trek over to the Chick-Fil-A drive thru right as the storm was finishing up. We came to the end of our neighborhood, and on the backdrop of dark skies and rain clouds moving away, the sun exposed a vibrant, beautiful double-rainbow.

It was the clearest, brightest rainbow I could ever remember seeing, and there were two of them stacked on top of each other. So we pulled over to the side of the road and just stared at it for several minutes, in awe of its beauty. Suddenly in that moment, our problems went away. Quarantining wasn’t a reality, the virus was gone, and the only thing standing in front of us was the majesty of the promise God delivered to Noah all those lifetimes ago.

Sometimes a storm ruins a perfectly good day. Sometimes things take a huge turn for the worst when everything seemed to finally be going well. But to know that God is still there, keeping a promise He made to an old man thousands of years ago, is what we need to move forward.

We will get through this. I know that because God showed me a rainbow last week. He’s got this.

-Matt