Rainbows


I had a few subjects in mind for today:  Mica, Little Known Stories... but as I walked downstairs "rainbows" was the word pressed on my heart.  And as I got my phone off the charger I noticed that while Jim was up later than me last night - he had sent me an article about rainbows.  Okay, God - rainbows it is!

Apparently, a double rainbow appeared over New York City a few days ago on 9/11 as Americans reflected on the thousands of lives that were lost due to the terrorist attacks 22 years ago.

And, interestingly enough, a double rainbow also appeared in the sky following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022 as people gathered around Buckingham palace to grieve.

Christianfaithguide.com said, "the spiritual message behind a double rainbow is said to be one of hope."  And the Bible tells us that after the flood God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:  I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and a rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.  Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.  Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."  - Genesis 9:12-16

While posting pictures of the double rainbow over New York, people made comments like:

  • "I cried while taking a video of it, it was something I needed to take in and capture at the same time - it felt like a hug and a sign from above."
  • "Wow, this got me...22 years after the attacks on 9/11, the NYC skies were consumed with a heavy thunderstorm that was followed by this double rainbow."
But what is most interesting to me about rainbows, is that as I was coming downstairs this morning - it was not the rainbows of Noah, or 9/11 or the ones that appeared after Queen Elizabeth's death - it was the one shown at the top of this post that I had in my mind.

This "rainbow" is a data visualization of the interconnectedness of scripture.  It shows the conceptual links between verses, connecting locations, people, phrases, etc. found in different parts of the Bible as well as cross references included in the footnotes or margins of some Bibles. 

The bar graph running along the bottom represents each chapter of the bible and the length of the segment corresponds to the length of the chapter. Then, each of the nearly 64,000 cross references are represented in a single arc, the color corresponding to the distance between the two chapters.

If a rainbow is a sign of hope, then the story in the Bible is the ULTIMATE rainbow.  It is one that reminds us that no matter what our flaws or failures are, God knows them...and yet He loves us anyway.  

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