Genesis 9

Better Than a Silver Lining

Sometimes it can be hard being a pastor. One of the most difficult experiences I have had as a minister has been in connection with the death of a nine-year-old boy in my congregation. He was killed in a road accident the same day that his mother gave birth to a daughter, and almost a year to the day that she lost a son at childbirth. She has one other son critically ill in hospital.

The trauma suffered in a community when something like this occurs is very great. God's Providence can weave a strange tapestry in our lives. In any circumstances the death of a young child would have been hard to bear, but in these circumstances the grief went deep, and the portion was a bitter one.

Clouds of grief and sorrow can overwhelm us at time. All that the world can say to us, and sing to us, is that there is a silver lining on every cloud, and that everything will be OK. But when events traumatize us and shake us, we need something better than a silver lining on our clouds - we need God's rainbow of promise, such as he gave to Noah in Genesis 9.

The flood was over - God took Noah out of the ark, and Noah worshipped God there. What a lonely place the world must have seemed to Noah at that particular time. But God spoke to Noah, reaffirming the covenant of his grace, and giving to Noah a fresh glimpse of his saving purposes. There was to be a sign that God would never again destroy the earth with a flood - the sign of the bow in the cloud, symbolizing God's determination to preserve the earth and make it the theatre for the display of his saving grace.

Can you imagine, though, how Noah must have felt with the gathering of the storm-clouds in the sky, and the drops of rain on Noah's face? Every time the sky became dark and the clouds gathered, a doubt would arise in his heart - is this a new flood? The devil would come to him and say - 'look now - God's promise is short-lived - here is another flood'. And perhaps Noah spent many times, many days and nights, looking up to the sky wondering .....

Yet it was in that very sky, and in these very clouds that God placed the sign of his covenant love. "I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. It shall be when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember my covenant....The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature...." (Genesis 9:13-16). What a promise!

The bow of God's judgement had already been turned towards the earth. God had sent his arrows of judgement and wrath towards a world in sin and unbelief. Now the sign of an upturned bow symbolized that God's wrath was appeased and his anger turned away. Like Isaiah, Noah could say "O Lord I will praise You; though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away, and you comfort me..." (Isaiah 12:2).

God did not set the bow in the cloud so that Noah would see it, but primarily so that God himself would see it. It was a sign to him. Thank God today that the Gospel hope depends not on what we see, on our senses and on our feelings, on subjective emotions that change with the seasons, but on firm, unshakable and unmovable realities: God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself. We believe today in a covenant making and covenant keeping God.

Better than a silver lining over our cloud is a bow in it - the knowledge that whatever darkness covers our sky, God is able to deliver us and to keep us safe within the embrace of his eternal purposes of grace.