I really love my commute.  It’s 45 minutes each way, and as I am NOT a morning person, the pre-dawn chirp of my alarm clock is usually offset by a nice, mellow drive through rolling farmland, allowing me to gradually gear up for a busy day.  In the evening I’m more tired, but tonight I had sweeping views of rain clouds blowing across the sky, a wild sunset to the west, and to the east, a complete, perfect rainbow.

When I saw the rainbow tonight, I did what I always do: count the colors, try to spot where the end falls, and remember what God said in Genesis 9:16 “When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”   That is a profound promise.  God isn’t off somewhere else while rainbows bloom and fade on auto-pilot.  He is turning His face to study each one, actively maintaining a permanent commitment to us.  I’ve been working through “The Patriarchs”, a Beth Moore Bible study, and the lessons have taken us deep into the heart of the kind of promises God has made and kept.

How shallowly we often make promises ourselves.  “I’ll pick it up after work.”  “I’ll never do that again.”  “I’ll pray for you every day.”  A day or two later, life has submerged the promise to the depths, wedged under a rock of good intentions.  I love my husband deeply, and we have absolute trust between the two of us.  Even so, like children, there are times when one of us makes a promise, and the other, just for a tiny bit of extra reassurance, will hold out their hand, pinky extended.  We link pinkies in relief, because we know this means it absolutely 100% will happen.  We do not break a pinky promise, ever. Which really means we know how humanity operates.  We’re both aware of times we’ve broken other promises or been let down, and we can’t stand the thought of this being one of those times.

The study lessons have stirred up a question in me to which, until recently, I didn’t know I needed to answer.  I’ve read the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all my life, and I’ve never had a problem believing God made them promises and stuck to them.  The world is fallen, people break promises, bad things happen to good people, etc., etc. but God always delivers.  No problem.  My question is… what is He promising me?  I’ve felt His guidance, I’ve had prayers answered (“Yes” AND “No”), and I’ve experienced coincidences and interceptions that could only have been God.  But while my journey has been heavy on the faith that He is there, walking with me, it has been noticeably thinner in the experience of hearing “This is where I am taking you.”  And let me be clear, I haven’t forgotten that faith is having not, yet still believing.  But I crave a more two-way communication, and I’m seeing more clearly that it’s not God’s voice that’s weak, it’s my listening skills that are often full of static and showing signs of spiritual ADD.

Several years ago, I was driving in downtown Lexington during a severe thunderstorm.  Severe.  I was white-knuckling the steering wheel, trying to keep the car on the road, looking out for falling trees, and waiting to hear the train-roar of a tornado coming.  Traffic crawled to a stop at a red light and I sat there, still gripping the wheel, when I realized I had been constantly praying “God help me” for the last few minutes.  As I sat, the clouds lifted, just a little, and while the rain still pounded down, somewhere above it all, a ray of sunlight managed to break through.  Light started to glow through the glass of my sunroof, but it wasn’t golden sunlight.  It was red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.  I WAS the end of the rainbow.  It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like minutes, and I was able to breathe, uncurl my fingers from the steering wheel, and whisper “Thank you” before the stoplight turned green.  God extended not just a pinky, but a full-blown, Biblical promise, because He had been listening.  To me.  I can surely return the favor.