Rainbows from Above: Jim the Pilot
My brother Jim is a pilot. He wrote an essay about amazing things he has seen while he is in the air--"Running Rendezvous with Mother Nature." He says God is the master artist and craftsman of these phenomena. Jim gave me permission to share some of this with you. For example, here is a paragraph from his essay, about rainbows seen from above the earth:
The most unforgettable sight associated with clouds is a rainbow. When unencumbered by close proximity to terra firma, it appears majestically in a full, perfect circle. I have seen it only three times in nearly forty years of flying. Conditions must be just right: sun behind, altitude between five and twenty thousand feet, high humidity. It appears on the clouds ahead, possibly two miles in diameter. The full spectrum of colors is there, more vivid than I thought possible. As the aircraft comes nearer to the clouds, the rainbow becomes smaller, to a minimum of approximately one-half mile. The individual bands of color grow even more vivid. As the aircraft scores a perfect bull’s-eye on the rainbow, the nearest band is a hundred feet wide. I could reach out and touch it with my hand, but I do not have to. It comes inside and fills the cockpit with the soft yellow of daisies. We pass into the cloud and it is gone. No more than two minutes have elapsed, but the memory of such a moving experience lasts a lifetime.
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