Do you have something special, something tangible, that God has given you to remind you of His promises to you?

In the Old Testament, God often gave His people tangible reminders—stones of remembrance, fringes on their clothing, special furnishings in the Tabernacle—to help them remember certain things.

For me, my special thing is the rainbow. Now, I know God gave the rainbow to Noah and his family to symbolize the fact that He would never again destroy the earth with a world-wide flood. But I firmly believe that He looked ahead thousands of years to my bruised and battered heart, and made it for me as well.

Several years ago, I stood in the back yard of our home in Australia, looking out over the pasture. Overhead, a storm threatened. The kind of storm that turns the sky from blue to black, where the clouds are angry and menacing.

It symbolized my world at that time. A storm brewed, and in time, it would burst upon my family and shatter its very foundations. I had been enduring the rumblings of this storm for years, but it had yet to unleash its full fury upon me.

As I looked across the black sky, God gave me a most precious gift. A tiny rainbow was nestled in the midst of those threatening clouds. All around the rainbow, the sky was dark. But in the middle–this flash of color, of promise.

And God impressed upon my heart:

My child, you are going through a devastating storm. But I will be with you. I have promised to comfort you, protect you, guide you, and provide for you. Hold on to these promises.

Throughout the following years, I held on to the promises of God. I clung to verses of promise like a drowning man clings to a rope. I wrote them down in a small notebook and carried them with me everywhere.

One of my favorite verses through this time was Isaiah 43:2, “When thou passest through the waters,  I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”

And God kept sending me rainbows. Every time I saw one, I remembered His promise to be with me in my storm. The storm was indeed devastating, leaving in its wake a broken home, broken hearts, broken lives.

Near the end of my storm, God sent me a rainbow that I will never forget. It had been a long journey—nearly 10,000 miles from Australia to America, then another 600 miles travelling from Wisconsin to Missouri. As we pulled out on the highway that morning to make the last leg of our journey to our new home, a place where God would begin to heal my broken heart, I looked up into the sky.

And there it was, in the winter sky. A rainbow of promise, shining brightly over the highway. Never before had I seen a rainbow in the winter. But there it was, shouting its message to me—

See, God did it! He brought you through your storm! And He will bring you through all the other storms of life, too! He will never fail you!

I want to encourage you today—are you facing a storm that threatens to destroy your faith? A trial that doesn’t seem to have an end? Prayers that you have prayed so long that you grow weary of saying the words?

Don’t give up. Reach for your Bible and search for the promises of God. Write them down. Carry them close to your heart.

And perhaps find a visual reminder of these promises, something you see every day. Something to remind you that God carries you close, knows your heartache, and will never leave you in your pain.

 

 

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