Rainbows

Who doesn’t love a rainbow? Even without an understanding of physics or knowing the historic cultural background of the rainbow, we automatically view it as miraculous.

In my house, I have crystals hanging in windows both east and west. In the morning they fill my upstairs hallway and I can hold a rainbow in my hand before I go downstairs to start my day. And in the late afternoon, they dance across my living room to remind me that no matter how my day went, I still have the miracle of the beautiful rainbow.

I’m not claiming that crystals hold magical powers or that holding a rainbow in my hand (which can be only figurative) will assure me a gloriously blessed day. The “rainbow” is symbolic and a reminder that I can set my intentions for better things. The crystal is the tool, the prism, that splits the white light into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (ROYGBIV). Anyone who has studied either physics or color theory knows that in Additive Color Theory white light includes ALL of the colors and that when passed through a prism it is split into the seven colors above. (Subtractive Color Theory is the opposite and involves introduction of pigments which block certain light waves resulting in the combination of all of them together producing black or murky gray.)

But, forget the physics lesson. I’m talking about God’s rainbow, that glorious untouchable thing that appears in the sky when the sun breaks beneath the storm clouds and shines through falling raindrops that collectively act as the most magnificent prism. The rainbow shimmers against the gray sky behind it. It is awesome!

A few decades ago, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, while living in Lynchburg, I happily reconnected with an old classmate from my California days twenty-some-odd years earlier. She was on a business trip in Washington, DC, so I made the 3 ½ hour drive up to spend part of a day together. It was a time in my life that I was in serious need of some uplifting and seeing her got me halfway there. But it was the drive home, at day’s end, down Route 29 that completed the lift.

Shortly after I passed through Charlottesville and was driving through the rural mountains of Albemarle or Nelson County a heck of a storm with wind and diagonally percussive rain caused everyone with a brain to pull off to the side of the road. Understand, this is the same area that experienced that deadly deluge in 1969 when the tail-end of Hurricane Camille crested from west to east over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and normally small mountain streams swept through the communities, carrying away entire towns, farms, more than 900 buildings, tractors, cows, everything. 114 people died and 37 others were never found.

So, I sat in my car watching the huge old trees on either side of the highway switching about like giant green ferns. It was a four-lane divided highway, two-lanes each side of a heavily treed wide medium. After about 15 minutes the wind calmed, the rain nearly stopped and patches of sunlight began stabbing through the trees as the cars re-entered the highway and began to move forward. Everything was green on green, green mountainsides, green pastures, greenish sky, and green debris scattered across the shining black asphalt highway. Traffic frequently slowed with only a single lane to pass through.

And then I rounded a curve and found that traffic had completely stopped. Huge trees had fallen across both lanes and people were just beginning to get out of their cars to see what could be done. Though I was in a valley, I turned to my right and saw golden sunlight streaming through a connecting valley that had been partially cleared for a small farm. Instinctively, I looked to my left and saw an expanse of ominously gray sky over which stretched the most astoundingly brilliant double rainbow that I have ever seen in my life, to this very day! And it hung in the air for the entire time it took to clear a lane of traffic, 20-30 minutes!

I took that as a smile that God gave especially to me, although I suspect others had the same reaction. It was that remarkable! I was reminded that the symbolism of the rainbow, according to the Bible, was God’s promise, after Noah’s flood, never again to destroy the Earth by flood (small portions of it, maybe, but never the whole Earth).

So, that’s what the rainbow is. That is what it means, and that is its purpose. A few years later when I started seeing rainbows painted on sides of buildings in downtown Lynchburg, I took it as a good sign that people were remembering the promise of God. And if it meant that God loved all of His creation, all of His people of All colors and origins also, I was fine with that. I was oblivious to any other proposed meanings that might become attached. And to me, that is glorious enough a meaning. It remains its meaning and none other should tarnish its brilliance.

If you have another issue to represent, whether good, bad, or indifferent, you are free to pick another symbol. This one already belongs to God. That’s all.