A Picture of Hope in the Evening Sky

It rained this evening. Though now a few days into autumn, it was a quintessential summer’s evening rain. The sun, a rich and wizened yellow, was sinking on the horizon in front of me as I drove. The glowing road in front of me was splotched with water from the heavy raindrops dripping from the sky in an unhurried manner. The light grey clouds around the sun shone with a golden hue as the last of the sun’s beams caught their wisped edges. As I gazed at the picturesque scene before me, I could not help but be filled with hope. I was driving toward it. I was traveling headlong into the hope before me.

Behind me, consuming the entire horizon, was a blackened mass of a storm. There were no distinguishable clouds but the darkness seemed to be reaching over my head, reaching far enough, if it might, to obscure the light in front of me. Ominous, as a word, would be a suitable description. It threatened to overwhelm and overtake me if I were to make even the slightest of turns away from the light ahead.

My mind, simple though it is, worked out the rough analogy. I am headed out of the darkness of my past into the beautiful light of my future, a future that is beautiful solely by the grace of God which has rescued me from that looming darkness of my past. It was a basic truth, and perhaps an incomplete picture, but my soul reaped encouragement from this natural occurrence in the sky.

And as I let my mind dwell on this thought, I saw it. There, smack in the middle of the coal sky behind me, was the near vertical line of a rainbow. I don’t know how I had not already seen it. It was clearly there, not the brightest of rainbows, but blatant against its blackened canvas. O how true it is that the faithfulness of God has been constantly there in the middle of all the darkness of my past. What a glorious assurance this is, that though indeed the past is ever behind me, seeking to cast despair over my head and doubt into my sight, there is yet a hope into which I am headed and an enduring faithfulness over where I have been. It is only because God has been sovereign and faithful in my past that I am able to continue running toward the light of my future in Christ. And so I look at but do not linger on the past behind me, in order to see God’s faithfulness. And I seek to gaze unwaveringly on the hope set before me, that I may be strengthened to keep to this road I am now on.