ROMANCE OF THE RAINBOW

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 154, 17 July 1937, Page 12

ROMANCE OF THE RAINBOW

"Gumlea!!.")'

(By

Broken light — that, I am told, is what the rainbow really is. Nothing very romantic about that, you may say. But I think there is; for, as someone has said, "Romance is life seen in its most beantiful and wonderful moments"; and to gtasp the inner meaning of the rainbow is to se,e and feel some of the wonder of life. It appears .that light can be broken up into seven coloijrs — r.ed, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, The rainbow is made out of white light broken up into those seven colours by being reflected from conntless raindrops in the sky. Thus the rainbow is really a demonstration of the inherent loveliness of light itSelf. One would expect that those raindrops in the sky would obscuT© the light of the sun; instead, they enable ns to see, in sunlight, glories1 that summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease . . . I do set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth." The rainbow, then, is a token of the everlasting love of God, the reflection' of the Light of the World broken npon the sins of humauity. Surely this is romance at its highest! Naturally my mind moves back to the story of the first rainbow^ as told in Genesis; and again I see the rainbow as broken light, The white light of God's justiee had shone npon totally depraved humanity, issuing in a flood which all but destroyed the t ace. To the.few survivors this drastic remedy might appear the work of a cruel God -the mighty rain might easily obseure the light of Love. Instead, it broke up the Light into its component parts; aud it was reflected back to man as a sign not of cruelty, but of jnerey. " The Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake;' for the - imagination ®f . man 's heart is evil from his youth • neither will I again smite * any more every thing Iiving, as I have done."