Thought for the day – Thursday 14th May 2020
If we have to be in lockdown haven’t we had the best weather for it? It reminds me of a folk song from my youth, “it always looks better when the sun shines, it always sounds better when the words rhyme”, but I’m resisting the challenge to write this in verse! Yet last week it rained a bit and my social media feed was full of rainbow pictures.
There’s something ethereal, mysterious, even magical about a rainbow. I think it might be that it is so unexpected and transient. You can’t hold on to it, yet for a few moments you stand in awe and smile. Perhaps no surprise then that it has been adopted as a sign of support and hope in these strange and painful times.
We know where it appears in our scriptures, in that story so beloved of Children’s Bibles, which all too often is offered to us as an example of how awful humanity is and if you want to be among the tiny elect on Noah’s boat you’d better behave yourself.
And yet … have we yet again made this scripture about us, when actually most of the Bible is about God?
A God who declared creation to be good and who invited humanity to be co creators and care for that creation.
Yes it went wrong. It takes just 2 chapters for God’s plans for Paradise to become a story of a broken relationship between created and creator which leads to jealousy and murder. The sea of chaos which God had calmed in creation returns and the created beings pitch and roll upon it.
That reality of chaos is with us in our present situation. In truth it is with much of our world every day as people eke out a meagre survival. It is with those who try to navigate a system that claims to stop them from drowning. (Remember the film “I, Daniel Blake” ? In Felixstowe it was a disturbing Lent Course.) It is in mental and physical illness and relationships torn asunder.
What hope is there?
The issue of the Genesis story is resolved, but not in the way that we think it will happen. It is not destruction driven by God’s anger that wins out but the resolve of God to fashion a new way. God renews the blessings on humanity and also the instructions to care for all of creation. Then, amongst the clouds that still linger, the Rainbow is hung in the sky.
We are descendants (if only metaphorically) of Noah and his family. We still play out the anger and pride and jealousy of those stories. There are still storms and dark clouds but it is only when it is raining that we glimpse the rainbow – but we can only see it because on the other side is sunlight.
A promise of better times to come.
A reminder, not of the anger of God but of God’s grace.
An invitation to be the new humanity which will preside over the new creation.
When the present storm subsides the rainbow which has been a symbol of hope is our reminder that fullness of life for the whole created order is in our hands.