Gifts From God: Devotions From Time of GraceSample

God's Gifts in Our World: Rainbows

What is more fragile and beautiful and fleeting than a rainbow? Untouchable, it appears for a moment, Roy G. Biv shimmering wetly, and then it’s gone. You can find various explanations for rainbows in natural science textbooks, involving words like diffraction and prism effect. God thinks he makes them.

Noah’s post-flood world was very quiet and very empty. His future was going to be staggeringly difficult. But hey--he was alive! God told him and his boys, “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Genesis 9:13). There would be no more universal catastrophes until judgment day.

From that day on the rainbow has been a silent multicolored witness to God’s patience and mercy. Though the evil world richly deserves to be flooded again, God waits, waits for people to come to their senses and return to his fatherly embrace. God’s bow means that he wants you too and that it’s not too late. Come home now!