Third Sunday.
THE RAINBOW.
FIRST READING.
"I do set my Bow in the Cloud."—Genesis 9:13.
THE sin that came into the world when Eve listened to the tempter had grown as men multiplied and made each other worse. The wicked people had been drowned in the Flood, and Noah, his sons and their wives, had alone been saved in the Ark. After a whole year of being shut up there, watching the earth, first drowned and then coming out of the water, they had just come out on the fresh green earth, with all the animals saved with them, when God spoke to them.
Then God made a promise to Noah. It was that no flood of water shall ever drown all the world again, but spring, summer, autumn, and winter, day and night, will go on to the end of the world, when it shall be burnt up by fire, not drowned by water.
That Noah, and all of his after him, might feel sure that God in His mercy will go on preserving us, and giving us days and nights, seed-time and harvest, He gave us something to look at as a sign of His promise. He so ordered the rays of light, that when they shine upon drops of water in the air they cause beautiful colors, making part of a circle, so as to form a bow. So when the sun shines on a cloud, as it rains, the fair bright rainbow is seen, as a pledge to us of God's merciful care and love to us.