Origin Story #20 of 21:

Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds,

I will remember my promise between me and you

and all living creatures of every kind.

Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. (Gn 9)

Things don’t go well outside the Garden. There’s murder. There’s tyranny (Gn 4:24):

                        If Cain is avenged sevenfold,

                              truly Lamech seventy-seven.

There’s empire builders (Gn 11): “Let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.” It’s a global story about all humanity: “They all spoke one language.” This language and this accumulated knowledge gives humanity such power that “nothing they propose to do will be impossible for them.”

The narrative of our Origin Story reads much like David C’s “modern science origin story”. Both tell of a Garden of lush vegetation, both tell of life outside the Garden where man’s language and accumulated knowledge allow him to build vast empires of tyranny. Both speak of how this human knowledge and power brings us to a very dangerous place. David C. calls it the Anthropocene Epoch, or the “era of humans.” This, in both our stories, is not good. We are in need, both stories insist, of redemption. For David C., our hope of redemption has to do with the Paris Accord on Climate Change. Our story, places its hope on the call of Abraham through whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gn 12-Rv).

Through it all, there is this rainbow across the sky. Science tell us, it is caused by the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. I have no reason to doubt that it’s true. It’s easy for me to trust science when it comes to such matters.

Must science close all other possibilities but its own? There must be room for those of us who “by faith understand that the universe was created by the word of God” (Hb 11:3); to see in the rainbow something more. When we look, after a fierce storm, at the rainbow across the sky, we can’t help but think of a promise God made with us:

                        As long as earth endures,

                              seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

                        summer and winter, day and night,

                              shall not cease (Gn 8-9).

It was a close call, but God has decided to stick with his creation—to see it through to the end. “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the Promise between me and the earth and. …every living creature.”  That’s how our story goes tell “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, sing,

                        To him who sits upon the throne

                               and to the Lamb

                        be blessing and honor and glory and might

                              for ever and ever!” (Rv 5:13)

Are we not blessed to see such things when we gaze at a rainbow stretching across the sky?