Rainbows in the rain

I was talking with my grandson today. We talked about rainbows. We talked about going to Rainbow Land. His favourite colour is green (Peter Pan is his favourite hero), so we talked about only going to the green strip of colour on the rainbow, where everything would be green. We chatted wide – eyed about green tables, green chairs, green plates, green beds, green houses, green cats, green dogs.

I love rainbows. Doesn’t have to be a full semi-circle. Could be just a sloping line of colour, but the magic of them get to me every time. I have so many photos of rainbows as I just to try to hold on to the wonder of it all. This picture was at New Quay beach, Ceredigion. It was a lovely walk along the long beach; the blue sky clothed in cotton wool clouds. It wasn’t raining where we were, but you could see rain across the bay. Then the light came through and split the white light into a vibrant arc as He painted in technicolour on His vast canvas. This one was a near perfect arc – and it seemed like it was just for me.

Recently, as I just spent time contemplating the wonder of God’s love for me, everyone, an old hymn came to mind, whose opening line is:

Oh Love that will not let me go

I rest my weary soul in thee

George Matheson

It is such a beautiful song. He wrote it on the eve of his sister’s wedding in 1882. He was 40 years old. She was special to him as she had been the one who had supported him through college to become a minister. You see, at 17 years, he began to go blind. He told his then fiancé, and she felt she could not go through life with a blind husband, so broke off the engagement. At 20 years old he became totally blind. But his sisters, and in particular his elder sister, cared for him and supported him. On the eve of her wedding he had a difficult evening where he said he experienced “sever mental suffering” (1). Out of this came the hymn, written in one attempt, near perfect. We do not know if it he was upset as his sister, who had cared for him so long, was not going to leave him as she married, but it is clear in the lyrics of the hymn that he had a clear vision of the love of God, that would never let George go.

It is perhaps the third verse that has impressed itself on me so much lately.

Oh joy that seeks me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to Thee,

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.

Sometimes sadness is so hard to bear. Like the sad scene in a film where the rain just pours down, emblematic the tears of the hero, so my world can be full of dark clouds and tears. Life can be hard and sadness hard to bear. I may not like sadness, but it is an emotion that is part of being human. Sometimes I must feel it. If I don’t let my sadness out, it is will not be healthy. I need to cry to grow, mature. Like watching a sad movie. If I skipped the sad bits, there would be no depth or meaning to the story.

But this verse also reminds me that when my sobbing eases, when I can cry no more, when I wipe my eyes and look out to the horizon, there I can catch glimpses of light breaking though. And when this light, His Light, splits the rain, there I will see rainbows. Rainbows being His promise to never leave me, not matter how sad it gets. Rainbows don’t mean the sadness is over; rainbows without rain don’t exist. But if I calm my self, and look at His colourful brush strokes on the canvas of my life, I will start to trace our rainbows.