The ‘Arch in the Sky’ is the way the French say ‘rainbow’.
The little prop planes we took over the rainforest in Congo didn’t have instrumentation to fly through clouds and storms without visibility. So often we would get up in the air and then need to fly around isolated thunderstorms. Once we got to see lightning strike the earth from the top down! It was amazing. Another time we flew right up into a huge rainbow. I watched out the little round window to my right as the rainbow suddenly surrounded the entire plane!
I have been pondering circles, see SHALOM post here, and the rainbow is light and water surrounding us in a perfect circle. I used to always think about Noah and God’s promise in Genesis never to destroy the planet with a flood ever again. It made me smile to think of God’s promise every time I spotted the beautiful arches in the sky.
In the book of Revelation, God takes it to the next level. We get a glimpse of what the throne of God looks like and guess what is there?!
“And around the throne was a rainbow…” Rev 4:3
God is Light, in Him there is no darkness at all. And the full spectrum of light includes every color. God is surrounded by a rainbow. I have been thinking a lot about how this sign of promise is not only for us to look at, but it is also a sign for God to look at.
I have always loved color and blending/mixing colors. My childhood bedroom had rainbow plaid wallpaper, rainbow heart bedspread and a rainbow suncatcher (hey – it was cool in the 80s). But now I know the throne room of Almighty God is surrounded by a rainbow, the complete arc-en-ciel. Last month, I had been feeling compelled to paint this full-circle rainbow and kept putting it off. I had other things to do. Other tasks were more urgent. I delayed and delayed. I spent time in prayer one weekend and felt that I should paint it even more urgently. And still I put it off. You’re on thin ice when God asks you to do something and you drag your feet.
I kid you not, 24 hours after the prayer weekend ended (and I still hadn’t painted that rainbow circle), I went to take in laundry off the line and found two of the brightest rainbows in the sky I have EVER seen in my life. All the neighbors came out. Everyone stopped making dinner. We all just marveled and took pictures for at least an hour.
It felt like a clear nudge to me. I painted those circles the next day! They say a wedding ring is a symbol of covenant love because it does not have an ending or beginning. It surrounds. So is the rainbow like that? Like a heaven-sized wedding ring promising relationship? It feels like a hug from God for me to even think about it. Sneak Peek at my painting:
The Light is brightest on the inside. The darkness is on the outside. I will have to write more on this later. So many things in this Light… in these colors.
There are seasons of trial where we could all use a big hug from God, where we could all use a few minutes remembering his promises to his people. This ‘light and water vapor’ – it surrounds us all the time. We just can’t see it with human eyes all the time. It surrounds us. And it surrounds him too. Many many hard days this year, I have stopped to marvel at the spectrum of light that surrounds his throne.
We will be there.
It will be glorious.
And all will have real and complete justice and healing.
I have great hope in the mucky moments here and now because I can look to what is coming.
Hope you can too.
This work by Kimberly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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