The Rainbow Promise

Hope at the end of June and the end of the world

The glow of a summer sunset brings us tonight to the end of June, a very busy month for us personally. Summer is here, and we’re glad. Most of our activities are winding down, and we’re gearing up for some fun family getaways soon. I can feel rest coming, a needed quiet before autumn’s blessings come again.

Speaking of quiet, others have noted that so-called Pride Month has been quieter this year. Upon visiting our local library a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find not a single rainbow display with “recommended” books that I’d rather my children not see, let alone read. Maybe I missed it—I did take six kids with me, after all—but I don’t think so. I also haven’t seen as many brilliantly, glaringly colorful signs at stores, either. Perhaps we’re reaching a cultural moment, a needed breath of reflection, after years of in-your-face propagandistic marketing that has been too often lurid, emotionally manipulative and coercive, and sometimes deliberately disgusting.

I hold no illusions about the future. I don’t think our culture will suddenly embrace any sort of traditional religious devotion or even a belief in the importance of personal self-control and prudence. But I still see glimmers of hope in this very dark world, daily approaching the end of time, that God always keeps His promises, even when we—sometimes spectacularly—don’t.

This evening, when I was disappointed at another squall that had blown in just when I was going to take a walk, I heard the kids shouting. “Mom! Look! It’s two rainbows!” I ran to the front of the house. Out of the open door, I gawked at the most beautiful rainbow I’ve seen for a long time. And there! Above it was another, a faded but clear duplicate. A double rainbow, shining in the dropping sunlight that broke through the cloudbreak low in the sky.

“Let’s chase the end! We can find gold!” yelled one child.

“They’re so beautiful!” sighed another.

“Are these rare?” asked one, obviously expecting the answer to be in the affirmative. I told him I’ve seen double rainbows before, so they’re not that uncommon. But I admitted the lower rainbow was one of the brightest I’ve seen.

And then I thought of the rainbow promise.

And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Genesis 9:12-17

How beautiful. God makes a covenant for us, and His sign of the rainbow seals His words. When we see a rainbow, He will remember His promise. What do we get? A lovely reminder in the heavens that He will not destroy the earth with water again, and even more, that God has fulfilled His promise to provide a Savior for us.

“Is that a rainbow on the sidewalk that you drew?” I asked two of our kids who were capering in the raindrops.

“Yes!” they said excitedly. I knelt down to capture their coloring and the colors in the sky. Another kid called them, and they turned toward her.

And for the first time in a long time, I thanked God in Jesus for making rainbows, ones from the hands of children and those He paints in the sky.