Harvest Rain

As I was out on my fast walk this morning I thought about what God might want me to say about this photo. We saw this rainbow on the Kansas/Nebraska border yesterday morning on the beginning stretch of the long trip home to Fort Worth. The sky was changing so quickly at the beginning of dawn, yet the rainbow remained for a good amount of time in its entire span from beginning to end. It ministered to me on several levels:

First of all, the joy of seeing a whole rainbow always brings out the delight of the child in me. It was stunning as it spanned the sky. But it was only the second time in my not short life that I had seen the actual beginning of the colors right on the ground. Most I have seen fade away before reaching the horizon, or are blocked from my vision by buildings in front of their beginnings and endings. This magnificent arch moved in a huge area along the ground as the base traveled across the field. There was such majestic covering of the harvest.

Second: the stripes reminded me of the lanes of a race. Each of us has a race to run. (Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith...Hebrews 12:1-2).

Third: it struck me deeply that I got to see the beginning of the rainbow move along in a field that had produced an abundant harvest. Hmmm...coming out of the dirt, extending again, back to dirt. Dust to dust. God gives each of us a race to run equipped to produce a harvest for our use and his glory.
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Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. The threshing floors will be filled with grain...Joel 2:23-24

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth. Joel 2:28-30

Fourth: though the rainbow, our 'race' and lifespan in this earthly body, ends in dust, I have a future in heaven:

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly...Hebrews 12:22

...a beautiful forever home after the race is done...filled with stunning jewel colors that would put a rainbow on Earth to shame!
Our rainbows are so full of hope and promise of what is yet to come.