Remembering the Rainbow

It had been raining that day.

The heavy storm clouds that hung so low overhead had burst open even before the sun could rise, and the downpour never seemed to stop.

And so from twilight to twilight it had remained depressing, cold and terribly dark.

Perhaps it’d been because I failed in something I had worked so hard to achieve, and that salt had been smothered on old wounds never truly healed. Perhaps the stress of simply living, of feeling, of thinking, had become too much.

Or maybe it was just the weather.

But I was angry that day. Angry at myself, angry at the world…
Angry at God.

Angry because I was hurt. Angry because no one seemed to care. Angry because I was losing my faith, that I was beginning to doubt…and that I could no longer feel Him there.

I was angry… angry and tired.

Disillusioned, even.

Why should I believe when Hope was merely illusion?

As I walked on, the roaring wind, the passing cars and the chattering people all seemed to fade into nothingness.

I felt only the numbness of heaven’s tears, and taste only bittersweet saltiness as they merged with my own.

We’ve all had days like this. Days when we wished we had never gotten out of bed, days that we didn’t want to face, days when everything that is anything goes utterly wrong.

And finally, at the end of it all, we are only left with depression, bitterness, self-pity and anger.

‘Why me? Why now? What did I do to deserve such pain?

It’s not fair.’

It is on days like these that God seems so distant. So unreachable. So far away.

‘Non-existent, maybe?’

Our faith begins to slip. We start to question the truth. Was He just a figment of our weak, gullible minds?

Nothing is worse than the doubt.

But the thing is…

Maybe if we had stopped brooding for a while, stopped dwelling on everything that was going wrong for once, we would have caught the empathy in a friend’s eye, the friendliness of a stranger’s smile, or the scent of the approaching summer.

We would have felt, completely free of all uncertainty, the complete encompassing of His presence. In glorious revelation we would have tasted the world, not through acidity of disaster or the bitterness of failure… but through the sweet ambrosia of His eternal love.

Must God’s grace always appear in the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightening, in the form of a work promotion, a victorious game or a successful exam? Sometimes the gentlest breeze can bring us more peace.

So often we forget this. So often we forget to give thanks.

And it is when we do, when we overlook His blessings, dismiss His promises and choose to dwell only on our misfortunes and pain…

That we will glance at our lives and see only emptiness.

But I never noticed.

I never bothered to look.

So now all I remember when I think of then is the cold, and the silence and the unceasing rain.

"When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth."
(Genesis 9:16)