“I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth.” – Genesis 9:13 (CEB)
After the flood, God hangs a bow in the sky. We usually hear the rainbow as a sign for us, a nudge to trust. But read the next verses again. God says the bow is so that God will remember: “I will remember the covenant.” The sign is God’s reminder to God’s own self.
Sit with that. The keeping of the promise does not rest on our memory or our steadiness. It rests on God’s. That is the ground the whole Christian life stands on. We show up unevenly, we forget, we drift, and still the bow hangs in the clouds because God has bound God’s own self to remember. Our small, wobbling faithfulness is held inside a faithfulness far more durable than ours. Whose faithfulness are you counting on to hold your faith together?
Gracious God, you tied the promise to your own memory, not to mine. Hold me in your faithfulness when mine runs thin. Through Christ, Amen.