#64 – Seeing Rainbows

Welcome to season seven of Presently Engaged with Mandy Pallock. Here you’ll find short, friendly, Jesus-focused encouragement to live intentionally right where you are. In this episode, we will have a devotional thought source from life, and then we’ll end the podcast with a scripture reading. I’ll be reading from an English standard version of a passage.

This will give us the opportunity to center our minds on Jesus and our hearts on his word because lives will change as we engage with God’s word. Would you be willing to share this podcast with a friend or with someone you’re mentoring? Listen in and then join me at PresentlyEngaged.com. I’m so grateful for your time and glad that you are here because you friend are making a difference.

I’m sure it’s happened to you too. You’re walking or driving along your eyes on the road and someone declares, look a rainbow. If someone hadn’t called out, you might have passed by without recognizing the beauty before you, caught up in the cares of the moment you needed someone else to point it out to you. A rainbow occurs when light shines through water droplets in the atmosphere, and bending light creates the arc-shaped miracle we all learned to draw in preschool.

And when light bounces around a raindrop, beauty reveals itself. The best possibility for a rainbow is when the sunlight hits a raindrop at 42 degrees. This means that those looking for rainbows in the morning and the evening are more likely to be successful. And this also explains why rainbows are often sighted at waterfalls.

And because you need both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow, anticipate beauty after a storm. A rainbow is seen through the eye. It’s a unique combination of eye, angle, moisture, and light. Beautifully ethereal, a rainbow is a specific combination of specific rays of light shining through specific water droplets seen from a specific angle of view.

Here’s the amazing thing. Because of these factors, no person sees the same rainbow. It’s impossible to have two people stand in the exact same spot simultaneously. Therefore, we may both see a rainbow in the same location, but it’s a completely different rainbow.

Isn’t that grace? It may look like something you’ve seen before. It may remind you of grace in someone else’s life. It may hold similar color and hue and come out of a similar storm.

It may remind you of something you’ve seen on another day, but grace, grace which is God’s kindness to those who do not deserve it, grace is designed, applied, and revealed individually and uniquely by a loving Father. A rainbow is fresh, new, incandescent, and original. And the rainbow that you see is only your rainbow. When you share that vision with someone else, then the rainbow they see is only their rainbow, completely different than yours.

And that is grace too. It reminds me of God’s words to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12-9, but he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Are you going through a storm?

Look to the light. Do you see a rainbow? Tell someone else. They just might be able to see a rainbow from where they are standing too.

This season, we’re reading what I call the Apostle Paul’s power prayers. So join me in reading Romans 15, verses 4-7, and 13-14, and 2 Corinthians 13-11-14. This is the word of the Lord. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.

Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another. Agree with one another. Live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints, greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

The Freedom Journey is coaching for Christians. It’s hosted by a group of Jesus-loving, faithful to the Bible men and women who have found freedom in their own lives and are working to share that freedom with others with an actionable results-oriented focus. Why do I mention it? Hannah Abed, the lead coach, is a dear friend of mine, and last year she asked me to join their board of advisors for the outreach.

Now, since then, I’ve been in meetings and had conversations and been lurking on the coaching platform, listening in on the life-changing conversations and hearing heart-revealing questions. It’s too good not to share, friends. Having read through and listened through and smiled through and prayed through the content, I see that the Freedom Journey does indeed share real practical steps for true freedom. And what is true freedom, you ask?

Well, if you’re feeling like a fraud or you can’t move past deep pain, or you’re wanting to understand more fully your position in Christ and the life-changing difference your faith makes, and Jesus makes in and through you every day, if you’re wanting to narrow in on who you are, what you’re doing, and why it matters, then those would be areas in which you can experience freedom in Christ. And if you’re looking for that for yourself or for someone you love, within the coaching context, check out thefreedomjourney.co. They’re currently accepting applications all summer through September 9th. Cohort 4 runs from September 19th through December 12th with breaks for holidays.

So check it out on thefreedomjourney.co. Here’s to Freedom, friend.