Taste the Rainbow

Imagine those lonely years of labor, building an enormous boat, and being the laughingstock of the neighborhood. Noah was 500 years old when he built the ark, that would mean centuries of ridicule. In those times, the world was full of great wickedness and Noah alone was found to be righteous. It would have been so easy to stop enduring and to follow the easy life of the world. But Noah remained faithful. 

Imagine how it must have felt to know that as you were sitting snug in your shelter, the door closed by the mighty hand of God, that every living thing- man and beast- would die with the exception of the handful of people in the boat and the pairs of animals that had marched their way onto the ark, the first migration of sorts. 

It must have been horrifying to think of the destruction of the earth, to possibly see the dead and dying struggling against the terrific surges of water. It must have been so hard to hear the cries of agony. 

Imagine what it must have felt like to hear silence after forty days and forty nights of heavy rain. How it would have felt to open a window and smell the wet air, hear the lap of water against your boat and to see nothing but water in every direction. Especially when your life has been spent in the desert, a place where you might have never experienced a sprinkle much less a downpour that swallowed the entire earth. 

Through it all, hard though it must have been, Noah had the promise of God to cling to. The promise of life and a future. The promise of Eternity. 

Imagine the hope that must have flooded Noah's heart when God spoke His promise never to flood the earth again, and sealed it with a brilliant rainbow. Bands of color encircling the earth, a covenant never to be broken. 

It would be easy to follow the ways of the world, to look and act like the world, to turn our back on what is right and to live a selfish, sinful life. But choosing to follow God, to be different, to be sensitive to His leading and His instruction, even though the circumstances might be heartrendingly difficult, will always lead to hope. 

Keep doing right and looking up, and you too, will see your rainbow.