And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.… When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (Genesis 9:12–13, 16).

My wife and I celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary with a trip to Iceland. Among the many things we learned about Iceland on that trip is that southern Iceland is a land of rainbows. We saw them everywhere and not just far off—sometimes they touched the earth within yards of where we stood. It was stunning, especially for me, for I have to confess I don’t pay much attention to rainbows.

I struggle to appreciate a rainbow because I struggle to see them, literally. I am severely color blind. When I am able to see a rainbow, it is usually a faint thing with at most two colors (yellow and occasionally something else).

I am not the only one who does not appreciate rainbows as I should. We see a rainbow primarily as a lovely, infrequent, temporary physical phenomenon. But God says it is his sign, a reminder to us that he will remember his covenant, the relationship he established with us, and all creation.

When God says he will remember, he is not talking about not forgetting. He is talking about keeping, about his faithfulness to his promise. The rainbow tells us that our relationship with God, and his care for the world, does not depend upon us. It is not based on how we perform. It is based upon, built upon, established, and guaranteed by himself alone. He takes on the burden of keeping his promise, of maintaining the relationship with us.

The rainbow gives us hope when we fail. It cries out to us that our failure, brokenness, and sin are not the end of our relationship with God. It drives us back to the foundation on which our relationship was always built: God’s grace in Jesus Christ. He will remember.

Prayer:
Father, you have given us the rainbow to point us to your faithfulness, to your grace keeping your promise to we who do not. May we see the wonder of you shining forth more brilliantly than the brightest rainbow.