Month: August 2018

Rainbows have been a symbol of God’s promise to never again destroy the earth by flood long before they became associated with the LGBT movement. Last weekend, here in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, we enjoyed spectacular rainbows on both Saturday and Sunday … along with enduring a lot of wet, rainy, miserable weather. It got me thinking about rainbows.

God’s covenant with the earth

The rainbow is a sign of the covenant God made with all living things on the earth. You can read about it in the first half of Genesis 9.  We call it ‘the Noahic covenant’ but it was really a promise of God to Noah and all living things on the earth – a promise that God would never again destroy the earth by flood.

Yet although the earth in Noah’s day had been cleansed of what sounds like chaos and wickedness involving not just humans but also the spirit world (read Genesis 6:1-8 if you’re game), it was still not purified. We can see that just by reading to the end of Genesis chapter 9. Right after the pronouncement of ‘the Noahic covenant’, we immediately spiral down to a written record of drunken behaviour, the dishonour of an elder, a curse, slavery and inequality in the world. Things are no better today, as a quick perusal of the daily news headlines attest. In 2 Peter 3:6-7, we read of another cleansing to come. Come soon, Lord Jesus, and set your world aright.

“Clothed in rainbows of living colour”

One of my favourite modern hymns, ‘Revelation Song’ (look it up and listen), contains the line ‘Clothed in rainbows of living colour’.  The author of the song, Jennie Lee, took these words from Biblical descriptions of ‘the Son of Man’ as recorded in both Ezekiel 1:28 and Revelation 4:3. In both cases, the rainbow wasn’t exactly a bow. It was complete, with no ends, encircling the one who sits on the throne in heaven.

Now that’s something to meditate on. You can’t meditate for long while looking at a rainbow on earth, because they’re pretty transient. But you can imagine. Sit still, turn off the radio, close your eyes and just picture Jesus’ radiance which is so bright that is like pure sunlight refracted into its various parts. I did just that … and slipped into a delightful sleep, losing two hours of the afternoon. Perhaps give it a go sitting upright and with a timer set. You won’t regret it.

Insights from Chinese characters

As you know, I enjoy looking at the various parts that make up Chinese characters and gleaning gems of enriched understanding of them. But when I first came to the Chinese character for ‘rainbow’ – 彩虹  (caihong) – I was stumped. The first character 彩means ‘colourful’ and really just describes the actual word for rainbow – 虹 – so we shall only focus on 虹, the second character. It is  made up of two pictographs – a worm or insect – 虫, and hard work – 工. Both parts sound somewhat like the Chinese word ‘hong’ for rainbow, though neither is quite the same. The character for ‘worm’ (虫) is pronounced ‘chong’ and that for ‘hard work’ (工)is pronounced is ‘gong’.

I wonder … I just wonder … whether the Chinese character for rainbow actually does contain a deep truth. God gave the rainbow as a sign of his covenant with the earth – with all living creatures on the earth. We read in Genesis 9:20 that Noah was ‘a man of the soil’ and that he ‘proceeded to plant a vineyard’. Could it just be that the Chinese character for rainbow – 虹 – actually reflects the role of those worms 虫and of man’s hard work 工 in managing the earth? God did, remember, make a covenant with all living things on earth, and he declared the rainbow a symbol of that. I don’t know that my explanation is right. If we could just go back to when Chinese characters were first written, over 5000 years ago, we could find out. If nothing else, I won’t forget how to write ‘rainbow’ in Chinese again.

Rainbows are a reminder of God’s covenant with the earth and provide us a fleeting glimpse of his glory. Yes, the rainbow symbol is used by some in our confused day and age to represent other matters too, but that’s only temporary. What is eternal is God’s sovereignty over this earth, his glory on the throne of heaven and his commitment to us. Wow.

Good grief.  How do we grieve well?

This post is not inspired by personal tragedy, but my heart does ache for friends in the midst of sadness right now. I have also just read an excellent little book which I can recommend without hesitation –‘Finding God in the Hard Times’ by Matt and Beth Redman, and it has got me thinking too.

Grief isn’t just about losing loved ones of course. It can be about losing a cherished role, dashed hopes or broken relationships. Sometimes we choose to embrace loss, not least when we decide to leave one community and move to another – something which cross-cultural workers know all too well.

Grief hurts.  Pain is not nice. I am the first to admit to being pain-averse, having just paid a lot of money for optional dental work to numb sensitive teeth. That’s a little wimpy, perhaps, but the pain of sensitive teeth is pointless. Other types of pain, however, are best recognized and permitted to throb. Trying to numb grief is not usually a good idea, though there are times when it is necessary to get on with tasks at hand for a while.

My culture – an Australian from a British background – doesn’t do grief well … in my humble opinion. We pride ourselves on having ‘a stiff upper lip’ and ‘being strong’. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ we say. ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn,’ we may add.  ‘God works all things together for good,’ some Christians quote, usually taking this precious promise out of context. Some of us think it admirable to restrain emotions, even when our hearts are breaking. We don’t want to make those around us feel uncomfortable, nor do we want to be seen as ‘weak’.

In contrast, people of some other cultures are quick to display grief. Chinese people grieve the loss of loved ones in different ways according to local customs and the circumstances of the death. There is often a period of time during which family members wear black armbands or pins, avoid brightly coloured clothing and refrain from any festivities including weddings and Chinese New Year celebrations.  Traditional Tibetan ladies remove the coloured cords they usually braid into their hair, the colours which proudly identify the communities to which they belong. In Thailand, the whole country wore dull colours for a full year following the death of their beloved king a couple of years back.

Grief is a constant theme in Scripture too. The Bible is full of laments, not just about death but other dashed hopes and painful afflictions too.  There is even a whole book of such poetry called, unsurprisingly, ‘Lamentations’. God wants us to bring our sadness and struggles to him. Ancient Israelites, mind you, were roundly criticized and punished for allowing grief and confusion to turn into bitterness and complaining (1 Corinthians 10:9-11). They weren’t to ignore it though. They were encouraged to turn to God in their pain and re-state their trust in him, even in the midst of grief, as we can see in many communal Psalms that they used in that era. (Examples include Psalms 44, 60, 74, 79, 85 and 90.) In the same way, modern-day Christians are encouraged to humble ourselves and bring our anxieties to God (2 Peter 5:6-7). We are never told to stuff it down deep and ‘put smiles on our dials’. As a community of God’s people, Christians are told to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’ and ‘mourn with those who mourn’ (Romans 12:15). In my community, I suspect we are better at the former than the latter.

What does this mean for us here and now? I don’t like pain, whether it be mine or a share of yours. However, I hope that as a maturing woman of God, I can overcome my cultural preferences and choose to be Biblical in the way I deal with grief and disappointments, be they mine or yours. May we manage our pain in a culturally appropriate way – according to the culture of God’s kingdom. Name it – share it – be real. No stiff upper lip is required or desired.