The Rainbow’s Promise

by Donna Poole

There were four babies.

None of them were early walkers.

But all of them were early talkers.

The four are ours.

Our youngest, Kimmee Joy, spoke in complete sentences at fifteen months of age, and lest you think I’m bragging, read on. The early talking was not always brag-worthy.  

Kimmee sat on the lap of a friend of mine she called ‘Grandma.”

“Grandma,” Kimmee said, stroking the woman’s face with her baby hands, “you have a very nice moustache.”

I was potty training Kimmee and had to take her into a bathroom in a store. The stall next to us was occupied.

Kimmee giggled. “That lady go fifty-two gallons!”

I gave her the look. “Shh!”

Trying to atone, she gave a sympathetic nod and said, “Maybe she have diarrhea or something!”

I hurried her outside to her dad and said, “Next time, John, you take her to the bathroom!”

“I can’t take her into the men’s room!”

“Oh yes you can!”

In the interest of full disclosure, Kimmee, now thirty-three, must deal with me. Brain surgery and subsequent seizures did a bit of damage to my right frontal lobe. Have you heard of a filter, that part of your brain that says, “Don’t say that?” Yeah. Mine’s broken. Or dead. To be determined. Now, on occasion, I inadvertently embarrass Kimmee.

The other day I was talking to someone on the phone and didn’t realize I’d said something I shouldn’t have until Kimmee groaned. “Mom!”

Do you wonder what I said? Sorry. My interest in full disclosure doesn’t extend that far.

Because Kimmee talked when she was so young, we soon became aware that compassion was one of her strongest traits.

She and I were waiting in the car while John was in the post office. An elderly gentleman struggled up the steps, one hand gripping the rail, the other clinging to his cane.

Kimmee pulled her pacifier out of her mouth. “Mommy, go help that man.” Her baby face crumpled in compassion.

“Honey, there’s nothing I can do to help him. And he doesn’t even know who I am.”

“Yes, he does know you! You are Donna Poole! Now you go help him!”

I didn’t go. I don’t remember how long it took her to forgive me.

Kimmee’s compassion extended to all God’s creatures, great and small. Except for giant spiders. When she was a little girl, she loved on neighborhood barn cats who came and went by the dozens, and she did shed “fifty-two gallons” of tears with each one who died.

Two dogs and countless cats have burial spots on our property some marked with crosses.

She never outgrew her compassion for animals.

Kimmee, and her husband Drew, live with us. They’ve adopted four stray cats who live inside, three more who live on the porch, and other assorted outside creatures. There was a coon for a while.

Just this summer Kimmee rescued a baby bird, a fledgling, from her cats. It lay almost lifeless in her hand; she brought it inside to show me. After awhile it revived, and she set it free. It hopped off into the weeds. She also saved a few baby bunnies this summer. and a cicada.

Kimmee posted this on her Facebook page early yesterday morning. “Anyone else up at 2:30 a.m. attempting to rescue a wayward katydid who came through a window air conditioner and invaded your bedroom? Just me? Cool, cool, cool.

“Also, I say ‘attempting to rescue’ because I’m only about 50% sure it actually went out the door. It kept flying back in, but I tried.”

That “trying” took more effort than most people would have given a katydid in the middle of the night; she had to carry it down a flight of stairs to open the door and set it free.

I imagine God smiles when Kimmee and her kind care for His creation.

God cares deeply about His creatures. The Bible says God feeds the birds; He notices every tiny sparrow that falls to the ground., and He labels as righteous a man who cares for the life of his beast.

William Cowper wrote,

“I would not enter on my list of friends

(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. …

Ye, therefore, who love mercy,

Teach your sons

To love it too.”

You probably know when God put the rainbow in the sky after the Great Flood He did so as a promise to mankind that He would never again destroy the world with water. But did you know God made that covenant with all the living creatures too? You can read it in Genesis 9:10.  

Yes, God made a promise to the animals that day, and He talks to them with every rainbow He puts in the sky. I like to think someday when we talk to the animals, they’ll use words to answer us. I’m only guessing at that, but if Eve wasn’t surprised when the serpent spoke to her in the garden, and Balaam wasn’t shocked out of his sandals when his donkey scolded him; perhaps there was a day when conversation between animals and people was common. And maybe that day will come again.

I know we can learn a lot from God’s creatures even now. Ants teach us not to be lazy—Proverbs 6:6—8. Birds teach us to trust God—Luke 12:24. A crane showed John and me patience as he stood motionless for a long time in the water waiting for a fish.

I’m not preaching vegetarianism, though if that’s your thing, fine. I like a good steak as much as the next guy; I’ll take mine medium well, not the way Mom cooked it to please Dad, charcoal black.

But I’m thinking I’d better enjoy my steaks now, because a wonderful day is coming when I don’t suppose I’ll be eating them anymore. I love these verses from Isaiah 11 about the Kingdom, when Jesus comes to rule on earth:

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.

“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

No hurt? No destruction? Only peace? I’ll give up my steak for that! The same God who made His rainbow promise to us and to the animals gave us the promise of peace too. Kimmee won’t have any more animals to rescue then, but neither will she have to cry fifty-two gallons of tears.

Kimmee’s compassion extends to me. Even though she knows only God can do it, she’s been doing her best to rescue me from the claws of cancer as fiercely as she takes a baby bunny from her cats.

I may get well and strong again here on earth. But I surely will be well and strong enough to dance with joy on that holy mountain! Everyone will be kind there; no one will needlessly step on a worm, and perhaps the animals will talk. And in my imagination a perfect rainbow circles that mountain, a reminder that God always keeps His promises.

I suppose we’ll all know what not to say there, and “Grandma” will no longer have her moustache.