At the End of the Rainbow
{This story isn't about what's at the end of the rainbow. People are always trying to get there, always chasing that something wonderful that will make their lives perfect. More people find it than one would expect, but they find themselves empty-handed, because there's nothing there but a rainbow's end. But maybe that's the problem right there - and the solution. This story is about the rainbow's purpose, the rainbow's reason for existing, the rainbow's end... We come asking for Things. He sends us away with Himself.}
She stalked from the house, away from the small, angry things that shook her world and filled her mind with hate. The storm brewing between her ears was matched by the low rumble of thunder from the grey sky above her. A few raindrops spattering down did nothing to dampen her mood, for it was already drenched through and through.
I saw her and felt myself scowling, both with and at her. I despised her for her self-righteous sulking, yet it was somehow very like my own.
Her steps increased in speed as she mounted a low hill and followed the winding, tar-blackened road down the other side. She seemed not to notice the occasional skid or slip of a foot on the slick, shining surface of the road, so intent was she on the road at the ground just before her feet. Oil leftover from cars left dull rainbows here and there, and she kicked at them. The air was clean and cool. She sucked it in and blew it out with an almost vicious air.
I noted the deepening line of her brow. I could almost hear her thoughts thumping by with the rhythm of her feet, or hissing heavily with her angry breathing, whirring with the occasional passing car.
"Joy comes in the morning," she muttered (and so I heard her mutter). "Aye, it comes then, but then the rest of the day wears on and wears it out. Joy must be very tired by the evening."
I looked at her. Joy did seem very tired in her just then--so tired, it might not have been joy at all.
"What then?" she continued. "Is joy only for the mornings--like dawn, something only to follow the utter dark?" She seemed to speak to the western sky, where the sun was setting with half-hearted glory through a mass of grey-brown. "Is grace only the very wicked, and never the petty, the trivial, the weary? Sins of dusk may seem pale, but I ache from their numbers. Is there no saving comfort before the dark of night?"
I ached with her.
She turned sharply down another fork in the road, storming down the hill.
It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair.
"You promised!" she gulped, clutching her hair as if that would keep tears from falling. "'I am with you always, even to the end of the age' - remember that? Does that not include the end of one day?"
I had to jog to keep up with her now. She burst over the next hill and halted abruptly. So did I. I heard her sharply draw breath.
She stood, transfixed, gazing eastward at an arc of colour peeping steadily over the trees. Then, without further thought or speech, she ran in earnest, splashing through puddles and muddying her trousers to find the clear view she knew waited just 'round the bend after the next.
I watched her halt once again, lifting her face to the sky. She seemed to breathe in the colours. I could almost feel her thoughts, not huffing or thumping or hissing, but whispering with the wind that stirred the hair on her forehead.
She lifted to the blazing arch of colours, clearer and brighter than any she remembered seeing before. A rhyme from the days of learning the alphabet in her childhood flitted unbidden through her mind.
Rainbows in the sky are promises to men
That the Lord will not flood the whole earth again.
As surely as she remembered the names of each colour, she remembered. Yes, she remembered the colours' names - red, yellow, purple - yet there seemed to be no name for the whole. 'Rainbow' didn't seem to do it justice.
And then she saw herself clearly: striding down the road, eyes fixed to the path before her, kicking at dirty little prisms on the oily tar - when all along glory had been waiting in the full expanse of the horizon.
I heard her sigh a little - or maybe it was a sob - and realized she was craning her head back further. She had spotted a second rainbow above the first.
"Thank you," she breathed, voice cracking just a little. It was time to return, so she turned back the way she came, but as she walked she kept her face toward the east, neck twisting awkwardly to keep the glorious image before her as long as possible.
Even when the trees blocked the rainbows from view, I knew she could still see, and I didn't understand. I walked in her shoes, breathed her air, wore her skin - but I didn't understand. Why had her eyes glowed with a fever that I could not diagnose or treat? How could she walk as if a burden had been lifted? Nothing had changed; she had merely discovered a bit of pretty sky. And--what was she murmuring?
"Joy comes in the morning," she sighed contentedly. "It may be weary by evening, but the Giver is not. He will give--and give--and give again, and each time shall be newer than the last." Her words were wrapped in sadness and exhaustion and hope.
I looked at her feet--my feet. Her thoughts were quiet. I wanted them to speed up again. I liked the crashing waves, the thunderstorm of anger and confusion. I couldn't comprehend this sudden stillness.
Finally, she stopped at the top of the first hill, eyes turned westward. The grey of the sky had now been overcome by fiery red-gold, and it seemed to her as she looked out that the lingering traces of thunder in the air were distant hoofbeats. She thought she glimpsed 'midst the scarlet and the gold a shining rider, wielding a gleaming sword for terror and for love. And very soon, a resounding cry from his mouth would ring: "Behold! I make all things new!"
I couldn't see anything.
I like this post, because many times in life God has shown me the mystery of his ferocious and terrible love masked in the guise of the most simple, mundane and gentle of things – things that I know were meant for me alone to discover, for by any other rational estimation they would easily have been written off as mere coincidence or, well, flat out silliness. In the deepest moments of my ranting and while my vision has been completely downcast to the oily puddles on the road that you describe, I’ve been fortunate enough to have flashes of clarity from which I’ve literally said aloud, “Show me.” And when I have – and when I still do – I typically get a response like your rainbow. The key is that He makes me raise my eyes and look for what He would have me see. It’s amazing what we see when we seek the cosmic “coincidence” of His purpose – a coincidence that is by Him, from Him, and for Him, but one that he uses to transform us if we only we will seek to be transformed. Lovely, introspective piece of writing, Anna.