Yet, I would have edited a bit if I thought I could help you see what I saw. In the cloud where that streak of color is right of center is a full-fledged rainbow. It just looks pink in the picture, but it was way more than that last night.
Do you know what clouds are made of? Probably you do, but I'll remind you -- they're made of drops of water or ice crystals that settle on dust in the atmosphere. When the light from the setting sun hits these water drops we get a bunch of color. There wouldn't have been a rainbow without the cloud. And there wouldn't have been a cloud without the dust.
The dust is what intrigues me.
My life, at least my inner life, is pretty dusty these days. I love where we're living. I love the church we are part of (the picture of the church is in the margin on the right). My kids are doing great in school -- all of them! My marriage is solid. God is getting us through financially even though our former house has yet to sell and my two kids in college needed extra help with tuition payments. I have so much to be thankful for.
And I am. I am so thankful.
But when I went out to take the picture of the sky, I was asking God to get through to me. See, the dust in my soul is leaving its marks on me and it's kind of hard to get past those dusty fingerprints to just focus on Jesus. I've been saying (and praying) all week, "Not my will, but Your Will, Lord." And I mean it. I truly do. But there's a little Jane inside (or maybe it's the dusty prints) that is wreaking havoc with my contentment state. Because even though I truly want God's will, I still want the house to sell, like NOW or YESTERDAY. It would make life a whole lot easier financially. God's in charge and He obviously didn't want it to sell yesterday or it would have. And He doesn't plan on it selling while I'm writing this so I need to be content in that. And I kinda am.
But I'm also conflicted.
Apostle Paul was content in life even in prison but this was a learned response. In Philippians 4:11, he writes, "I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am."
If he can learn it we all can learn it.
Maybe when there's a whole of lot of dust in our lives we can just let the water of the Spirit settle on those dusty places. The dust is still there but God's colors are coming through. What's the message? The same one God gave Noah way back when. He's connected Himself to us in covenant. In Genesis 9 He goes onto say that this covenant means He won't ever flood the entire earth again. I'm not sure why I needed to be reminded of not to be concerned that the earth won't be flooded again while dealing with soul dust, but hey, we don't always know what we need to know.
It's funny. Right after Noah gets this cool sign from God and has a conversation with the LORD Above, he gets drunk and lays around naked. Maybe God told the Genesis writer to include this little bit to remind us how human Noah was. Yeah, he was chosen to be the one to save the animals and humans from the flood, but he still messed up.