A Rainbow Revelation

Pollyanna hit the big screen with Hayley Mills in 1960--I was almost three at the time, so it's likely that I didn't see the movie until it came on television. But by the time I saw it, and saw her using prisms to make little rainbows on the walls, I knew what she was doing. Grandma Polly had a beautiful lamp in her living room with cut glass dangly things, just like in the movie, and my sister and cousins and I loved making rainbows too.


If you're like me, you still get excited by rainbows in nature. They're little surprises, aren't they, like spotting a mother duck and ducklings waddling across a busy street? We know they exist, they aren't exotic or rare, but we don't expect to see them every day, either. When we round a curve and are treated by a gloriously vivid rainbow, it takes our breath away.


Every couple of weeks, I try to plan a day off from the stress and responsibility of Real Life. I call  these little trips my visits to the parallel universe. The phone is turned off, or set to vibrate, but the family is cautioned not to call unless blood is involved. A lot of blood. I take my laptop, current read, perhaps a bathing suit in case I find a beach, get in the car, and drive. Sometimes I head north, sometimes south. Most often, it seems, the car goes west.


Route 60 W in central Florida doesn't have a lot going for it--unless you're hungry for peace and quiet and simple. Once you get past Yeehaw Junction, you'll see cows. Scrub oaks. Palmettos. Signs for this and that here and there, but mostly a lot of sweet, serene nothing. As the ridge of the state rises and you climb to Lake Wales, there are all kinds of things to see and do, but until you get there, well, you can just sit back and listen to music or sing or pray or practice upcoming speeches...that's what I do, anyway.

Coming home at the end of a restful day, this being Florida, I often run into rain. Or a rainbow. Or both. Even though I know that a rainbow is nothing more, technically speaking, than an example of refracted light, it always feels like a sign. An omen of good things. A promise.


Rainbows have been written about and discussed for thousands and thousands of years, everyone from Aristotle to Newton . In Genesis 9, only a few chapters after everything started, God places a rainbow in the sky as a sign of his promise not to destroy the earth by water again. Noah and the ark, two-by-two...hopefully, you went to enough Sunday school to get the gist without going through the whole thing again. 

The science of rainbows is pretty basic. White light is bent, or refracted, by a glass prism and our eyes see individual colors. With a rainbow, sunlight disperses through moisture in the air and we get the same effect on a spectacular level.


Scripturally, there are many references to God's light. He spoke earthly light into existence (Genesis 1:3), he is our light and our salvation (Psalm 27:1), his words are a light to our path (Psalm 119:105), Jesus was called his followers the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), God dwells in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16). 


Despite all the light that's there, however, it dawned on me this week that I tend to think of spiritual matters in black and white terms....or did in years past. I've noticed as I've gotten older --does everything change when you hit 50?-- that I've made my peace with some of those shades of grey along the spectrum (not as in the wildly successful erotica Fifty Shades of Grey...haven't read that yet!). Still, though, those extremes loom large. Good v. evil. Righteousness, holiness, perfection. Sin, depravity, gloom and doom. Heaven. Hell. Us. Them.


It suddenly occurred to me, however, seeing a rainbow on Route 60 while basking in the afterglow of a wonderful day off, that light  is anything but shades of grey. It is glorious, beautiful red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet --and those are just the main colors as Newton listed them. Every band melts into the next. Rainbows are like peacocks--there's no scientific need for that much color and beauty, but God's an artist and that's what he does.


So I am determining to think differently. I think I've limited God in my mind and life, holding him (and others, and myself) to blacks and whites...maybe a few greys...when he's been trying to talk to me about red, or blue, or violet. I've been so busy looking for perfect white light...which, apparently, is unapproachable anyway....or focusing on the black holes around me that suck in every smattering of light and life....that I've missed out on some of the yellow and green vibrance.


Refracted for us to see, for our simple little brains to perceive, is God's light. On faces. In embraces. A mother duck waddling across the street with her ducklings. Making someone laugh. Traveling to a parallel universe for a little R & R. Hearing a magnificent piece of music. Reading a perfectly crafted sentence. 


Having one of those "oh!" moments of revelation.


I've been enjoying rainbows since I was a little girl, and learning about God for 54 years, and I'm just getting this now? It's not about the black and white....it's about the rainbow.




(c) 2012. Permission to use with acknowledgement of source.