The Bow Hung in the Sky

(Genesis 8:20–9:17)

The rain had stopped.

Noah stepped down from the ark
onto wet, washed ground.
The dove's green leaf had told the truth:
the flood was over,
the world was clean and new.
But one small worry stayed tucked in his chest:
What if it happens again?

So Noah built an altar,
and said thank you to God
the only way he knew how.

And God leaned close,
closer than the curl of the smoke,
closer than the morning sun,
and opened his heart to Noah
about something he had wanted all along.

Never again, he said.
Not the whole earth.
Not like this.
As long as the world keeps turning
there will be seedtime and harvest,
cold and warm,
day and night,
and me.
Always me.

Then God did something
so Noah would never have to wonder again.

He reached up,
and he hung his bow in the sky.

A bow is for war.
It is the thing you lift when you are angry,
the thing you pull when you mean to strike.
But God took his bow
and turned it the other way,
up, and away,
toward his own heart,
and hung it in the clouds
where it could never be drawn again.

A rainbow.

I will look at it, God said.
Not only you, Noah.
Me.
When the rain comes
and your heart starts to shake,
look up.
The bow is still there.
I have not forgotten.
I will remember my promise,
to you,
to your children,
to every living thing that breathes.

God did not say
the storms would never come.
Rain still falls.
It still will.
He said something braver:
that he would never let go of his world,
that his heart was set on holding it safe,
and that a promise from God
is the strongest thing there is.

But a promise, even a beautiful one,
points like a finger
toward something a rainbow cannot reach.

Because one day
God would do more than hang up his bow.
One day he would come down himself,
all the way into the rain,
into the very worst storm there ever was,
and he would take it into his own body,
every drop of it,
so that nothing,
not water,
not death,
not the bad thing you fear in the dark,
could ever sweep his children away.

His name is Jesus.

He is the promise
the rainbow was always whispering about.
And he has already kept it.
He has already come.
The promise has begun,
right here, in you.

One day he will finish it,
and make the whole wide world new,
with no more storms at all.
And the bow will still be there,
shining around his throne,
to tell you, forever:

he said never again,
and he meant every word.