ABOUT ROY G. BIV....

When a burst of sunlight follows a rainstorm, I often go outside to search the sky for a rainbow. It reminds me of the Biblical reference to this phenomenon after the Great Flood of Noah's time. After this faithful surviving husband and father, and his family, departed the ark (along with the animals), he saw a bow of colors in the sky. Genesis 9 says God communicated that this band would be a “sign of the covenant between Me and earth” that He would never again flood the entire world to cleanse it from sin.

I don't understand all the science behind how light rays become a rainbow. But when I see a rainbow, I think both of Noah and of the color meanings that emerged from its spectrum. As a child I learned the acrostic “Roy G. Biv” as a way to remember the color order. Later, learning the meaning of colors expanded my awe of the rainbow.

RED: Sacrifice, blood in Old Testament worship system and the bloody death by crucifixion of Christ for humankind's salvation. A close cousin, scarlet, used for sin. If you've ever passed quickly over Isaiah 1:18 (“though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow”), go to this website be awed by details on the grub used in ancient times as a red dye: The 'Scarlet Worm'.

ORANGE: not mentioned in Bible, but a “sacred” color for some Eastern religions. As a “fiery” hue, it connects with purification, passion, divine glory, and harvest.

YELLOW: negative meaning, for sin and fallibility. Leviticus 13 mentions yellow hair as a sign of the dreaded disease leprosy.

GREEN: like living plants of creation: hope, renewal, life, abundance, God's blessings.

BLUE: heaven. Also: sacrifice, atonement, salvation, purity. As “heaven,” the gateway to God Himself. Exodus 24:10 describes a vision of God and the pavement under His feet as bright as the blue sky. Also: the Law and Ten Commandments, something dedicated to a holy purpose, royalty, sacrifice, atonement, salvation, purity. Used for items in the Tabernacle, it was meant to encourage people to look to the sky—and by implication, heaven—to remember the true God. The Bible connects the color to power, importance and wealth.

INDIGO: a blend of blue and purple or violet. The dye was derived from a marine snail called the “murex mollusk” (see next color).

VIOLET (or purple): A valuable dye in ancient cultures connected with royalty or wealth, purple was sourced from a tiny Mediterranean snail whose gland produced only a single drop of the dye. One pound of dye reportedly took four million mollusks. Because of the dye's rarity and value, it was reserved only for those who were very wealthy, or worthy of some special merit or favor by the people. The dye likely contributed to the wealth of Lydia of Thyatira, the first Christian convert in Europe and known as “a seller of purple” (Acts 16). (Centuries later, in Victorian England, laws reserved purple or violet garments for wardrobes of royalty or the wealthy!).

So why all this chatter about colors? Because it's fascinating...and also intriguing that creation glorifies its Creator with a mysterious arch of brilliant colors when rain gives way to sun. Genesis 9 calls this natural sign a “covenant,” a visible reminder of God's grace when we fail Him. And maybe, instead of the symbolism of each hue of the rainbow, that Promise needs to be what I remember.

LOVE THAT WON'T LET GO

The hymn's lyrics speak of tracing a
rainbow through the rain: just imagine it...

The history of hymn writers includes three who were blind: John Milton, blind at age 44; Fanny Crosby, blind since infancy, and George Matheson, whose vision rapidly failed as a teenager. Yet all possessed keen spiritual insight: Milton, author of the epic poem Paradise Lost; Crosby, author of thousands of hymn lyrics; and Matheson, esteemed Scottish preacher and author of the hymn lyrics for “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.”

Born in 1842, Matheson's vision started to go in his teens, and he was totally blind by 18. Yet at 19 he graduated from the University of Glasgow. To enable him to finish his theology studies, his sister learned Hebrew, Latin and Greek. He finished seminary with high honors and was later assigned a parish at Innellan, a seaside resort in western Scotland. His faithful sister continued behind the scenes, helping him with sermon-study and other pastoral duties.

But his blindness also brought heartache. There are stories—not authenticated—that a young woman he hoped to marry broke their engagement when she realized he was going blind. Probably that hurt resurfaced years later, when he was forty, and his sister and faithful helper was married. On the day of her wedding, he wrote the hymn “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” This is what he wrote later about its inspiration:

My hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan on the evening of the 6^th of June, 1882. I was at that time alone. It was the day of my sister's marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression rather of having it dictated to me by some inward voice than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high. I have never been able to gain once more the same fervor in verse.

Some phrases that suggest his earlier heartache, of blindness ending marriage hopes, includes “flickering torch,” “borrowed ray,” and the tracing of the “rainbow through the rain.” But he cast a vision of higher purpose to his pain, looking forward to eternity. With the risen Son of Righteousness, there will be no more darkness: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4). The more important words in Matheson's lyrics are love, light, joy, and cross.

The hymn was published a half year later in the Church of Scotland's monthly magazine. The tune was composed a year later by a prominent organist. He, too, sensed divine inspiration in composing the music. He wrote: “After reading it over carefully I wrote the music straight off and I may say that the ink of the first note was hardly dry when I had finished the tune.” It was first published in the 1885 Scottish hymnal.

Matheson—a big man whom some likened to America's General U.S. Grant-- would become the pastor of the 2,000-member St. Bernard Parish Church in Edinburgh and known as one of Scotland's most eloquent preachers. He even was invited to Balmoral to preach before Queen Victoria. Later in life he wrote some of the finest devotional literature in the English language as well as some other hymns. He died in 1906, in his 64^th year.

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Hear the late Danny Gaither--brother to widely-known Gospel musician Bill Gaither--sing this hymn about forty years ago:

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go Danny Gaither - Bing video

ARCHED HOPE

“It’s just splendid!” I told my husband as I craned my neck to see the rainbow that appeared as we were driving home. “Brilliant colors, and a second one is trying to emerge!”

He was a bit disappointed because, as the driver, he couldn’t turn around and see what I was seeing. Finally, he was able to turn off to a side street and pull over long enough for me to snap a photo of the quickly disappearing rainbow.  He accommodates my crazy “photo op” moments.

I wonder how Noah felt as he emerged from the ark--dirty, tired, wondering just how they’d start over in a world that was probably little more than a landscape of mud.  Imagining this, artists have some vegetation growing through the muck of a worldwide flood—enough, of course, that the “scout” dove came back when some greenery in his beak. As the once-swollen black clouds, relieved of their water burden, dissipated, Noah caught sight of the first rainbow. The God-sign of regeneration, it must have been stunning in its brilliant blending of the spectrum’s colors.  I cannot imagine it. Here was hope in an arched palette, and every time it re-appeared, a reminder of the Creator who went way beyond a black and white world.

One passage that always reminds me to hang in there with life’s difficulties is Romans 15:4:

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

Noah didn’t have the scriptures, just stories passed down through generations that Moses would later put into written form.  But still, he believed...and obeyed. 

Sometimes I yearn for Noah’s grit in starting over in regard to seemingly impossible things I pray about. Some people I care about (and pray for) are stuck in the false belief that their miserable lives will continue to be miserable. If only they’d get out of the dark, manure-thick pens of the old life in the ark, and have courage to step on the gangplank to a new life with Jesus! If only they’d look up—and see the rainbow!  

An old poem I quoted recently says, “God has not promised skies always blue.” But every so often He hangs a sky-wide reminder that out of the storms, something splendid can emerge. So, yes, I get excited about a rainbow.  It's fleeting, just a few minutes while the sun and drizzle are just right to refract the sun’s rays. But it’s reminder enough to hold onto hope.