rainbows

I love rainbows. There’s something…. calming about them. They intrude into even my darkest moments, often when I am contemplating a grey sky and shaking my head at the weather. They make me smile. They appear and disappear with an almost magical quality. They can be small or large, dull or sharp, long lasting or transitory, but they all have this in common. They offer the hope of something better and new. They remind me that behind and above the grey clouds the sun still shines in God’s heaven.

 

It was Sir Isaac Newton who first discovered that sunlight falling upon a prism could split into its component colours through a process known as dispersion. From this I know that rainbows have a scientific explanation. That the bow is divided into bands displaying the different colours of the spectrum and is formed by the refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in drops of rain.  This physical explanation seems of secondary importance however to contemplating the sheer brilliance of the beautiful red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet of the arc. They seem like a thing apart, unreachable and incapable of being captured or put in a box.

 

It is probably for this reason that the legends of many cultures see the rainbow as a kind of bridge between heaven and earth. To Iranian Moslems, even the brilliance of the colours in a rainbow have significance. A prominent green means abundance, red means war, and yellow brings death. The Arawak Indians of South America recognise the rainbow as a fortunate sign if it seen over the ocean, while tribes in north-eastern Siberia see it as the tongue of the sun. In Judeo Christian tradition, early in the story of the world, after the great flood had subsided, just when Noah could have been forgiven for thinking that God had abandoned him and his family, God offered Noah the rainbow as a sign of his love and care.
Whatever story you go with, remember that rainbows offer a little bit of heaven in a dark day!