A Rainbow for Our Times.

My friends Linda and Giora sent me this picture of a rainbow the other day. I was busy on a Zoom meeting and had totally missed it.

Since it had been raining every day for over a week, my thoughts turned to the story of Noah. The rainbow was the sign God offered to assure Noah, and “every living creature” with Noah, that never again would God flood the earth “to destroy all flesh.” It would function as a sticky note in the sky. When God caused the clouds to form, God would see the rainbow and remember the promise.

Unfortunately, today we ourselves are destroying the earth and all living beings. The Bible says God caused the flood because “…the earth was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with outrage.” Leaving aside whether or not our immorality is an affront to a God I’m not sure I believe in, I think “filled with outrage” is, sadly, a perfect description of our world today. It is a world filled with acts of violence and brutality, acts we commit against each other and against the earth. Today we must worry about our grandchildren being murdered at school; without drastic action they stand to inherit a planet laid waste by our greed.

It rained for so long I jokingly told a friend I was building an ark. Perhaps the modern equivalent is a spaceship that will allow a lucky few to survive and repopulate the world. I’ll leave it to the dystopian novelists to imagine that future. For myself, I’d like to think I can behave in a way that merits a rainbow.