It was drizzling when I went out for my walk this morning, but the sun was peeking through, so I had high hopes for a rainbow. When I first arrived at the shore there was just a tiny bit of an arc linking the sea to the clouds above. It was enough. And then, over the next hour, the play of clouds and sun revealed different parts of the whole. I got this picture when it seemed most complete. By the time I left the shore, heavier clouds had moved in, leaving only shades of gray.
One of the scriptures we'll be using on Sunday is the Magnificat, Mary's song of praise to God for inviting her to bear God into the world in the person of Jesus. At the end, Mary says "God has remembered God's promise of mercy, the promise God made to our ancestors." Rainbows have been associated with a particular promise of God to Noah - that God would never again destroy the world with a flood. It makes sense that rainbows appear in the midst of rain, then, to remind us of that promise. You don't get a rainbow in a perfectly clear sky.
When everything is going great, we don't typically look for rainbows. We don't need to seek the silver lining beyond the storm clouds. And so we can forget, when storms come in our lives, to look for - or even to expect - the rainbow. We may focus on how gray everything is, and simply hunker down until the storm passes. We miss the rainbow if we do that - the sign, in the middle of the storm, that can help us hold on to hope. The sign of God's promise. Not that everything is going to be as it was, or how we might wish it would be, but that whatever is happening, God is there.
This morning reminded me that even if I can't see the rainbow behind the clouds, it is there, waiting to be revealed. That is what it means to live in expectation. The promise has been made. We may not be able to see the fullness of it, but we can trust it. Keep looking.