I trace the rainbow through the rain
And feel the promise is not vain
Driving away from a two month sabbatical in Cornwall, Gordon and I passed beneath and through a rainbow.1 The impression it gave suggested we had now left behind that glorious time and were entering a new season. Wonderfully, an hour or so later, we drove right through a double rainbow and our return felt covered by the promise of God’s presence and provision.
Coming back to our life at Lee Abbey is an immersion into the call of God, which - for every life that belongs to him - includes denial of self, carrying a cross and following Christ (Mark 8:34). The promise of God is sure and hope may be strong, but the call of God is not an escape from real pain and sorrow.
In our afternoon prayers today we were reminded of James and John’s request of Jesus in Mark 10:37: “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory”. The majesty, beauty and holiness of Jesus - his words, his works, the changes he effects - are glorious. It is perhaps not so difficult to understand their request. They know Jesus and love him - how natural, I think, that their hearts’ desire is to be close to him eternally. I too aspire to a glorious inheritance.
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with” (Mark 10: 38-39).
We have returned to this beautiful place to a wash of many tears - of sickness, sadness and death. God’s servant was “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (Isaiah 53:3).
Whatever your circumstance today, I pray that you may trace the rainbow through the rain.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee.
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain,
that morn shall tearless be.
(From the hymn, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, by George Matheson, 1882)
This photo is very similar to what we drove through.
From https://www.mediastorehouse.com/discover-images-by-awl/rainbow-rolling-farmland-edges-dartmoor-national-19360919.html
love that hymn, praying for a blessed reentry