Have you ever been in a heavy rainstorm? I lived for a few years on the island of Oahu, and there they have what are called "tropical storms." But, fortunately, the island has good drainage. Most of the water goes into the ocean, but a lot of it soaks into the porous volcanic rock and flows down through underground channels to form a lake of fresh water, called an aquifer, under the island, which is the source of a domestic water supply. However, those who live near large rivers are not so fortunate; terrible floods occur, many homes are destroyed, millions of dollars worth of damage and even loss of life results. Usually, there is little warning of the impending danger, perhaps a few days at the most. Yet these terrible meteorological events are local, and once the storm passes and the water drains away, reconstruction and rehabilitation occur with no permanent scars.
There was one storm, however, that was not local, but covered the whole earth. God gave Noah 120 years notice that it was coming, and He told Noah to build a huge ark. No one really knows what caused the storm and resulting flood; some believe God performed a divine act; others think that God employed some natural cause such as the impact of an asteroid or a near miss by a planetoid. Regardless of the cause, it rained torrentially for forty days, and great fountains of water gushed out of the ground, and the waters prevailed above the highest mountains. All of the land animals and human beings were destroyed except those in the Ark. It is estimated that there must have been a world population of about five billion at that time. When Noah and his family left the ark, God told him that He would never cause another flood like that one. As a token of that promise, He gave us the rainbow.
And so, for over 4000 years rainbows have renewed that promise. But not until recently has man understood what causes the rainbow. Now we know that sunlight enters drops of water which act as tiny prisms, and by refraction and internal reflection the light is separated, or diffracted and dispersed, into a color spectrum. The angles involved are very critical; the primary bow has an angle of about 42 degrees, depending on the color, and the secondary bow has an angle of 53 degrees. The secondary bow involves two internal reflections, so the colors are reversed and it is much fainter. The angles are so critical that each observer sees a different bow. In fact, you see a different bow with each eye.
Isn't it awesome that God has given each of us our own personal rainbow of promise? But that's the way all of God's promises are, they're all very personal. His promise of salvation is not based on race, religion, nor ethnicity, but on a strictly personal basis.
So when you get discouraged and you feel overwhelmed by a flood of problems, remember, there's a rainbow just for you.
