Spring has brought the blessings of rain and the trauma of storms (twisters) in the past two weeks. Nature has her way of soothing us and scaring us.
These are times, too, when the rainbow may grace the sky after such events. We know the promise it represents to those of the Christian faith.
Consider the words in Genesis from the King James Version, where the Creatorturned- Destroyer says to Noah, “And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”
“That I may remember”: The rainbow promise is as much for God as it is for us.
Had He not pronounced this covenant, God might have destroyed humankind during the Roman Empire, the Crusades, civil wars, the Gilded Age, the Third Reich, the 1960s, and right about now--in the midst of yet another global wave of corruption and violence.
For us today, the sight of the rainbow elicits wonder and gratitude, natural reactions to God’s promise. For the Creator, it represents the covenant that keeps His exasperation with humankind in check.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the arch of colors could inspire a new promise, flooding the earth instead with the mindset of which Jesus spoke?
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
What a wonderful world it could be, it should be, but often is not because we forget that the promise of love stems from the command to love.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
