Keep looking for the rainbow

Image from Pixabay

I saw a rainbow last night, walking from my workplace to Charing Cross Station. The trees were backlit in the gold of the setting sun, framed in bronze against a black sky. The rainbow arched, in misty pink clouds, over the London streets.

I love seeing rainbows. They remind us of God’s faithfulness, of the covenant he made with Noah, to never again destroy the earth through flood. (Alas, the human race seems to be working hard to rival God on the destruction front.)

Rainbows are multi-coloured symbols of hope and promise. They are the beauty that shines after the rain. They also symbolise a mystical, elusive pot of gold that only exists in fairytales, the very stuff of dreams.

So how are your dreams of writing going? In the ACW, we are all at different stages and on different writing journeys, including successful forays into self-publishing. Yet even a successful author can suffer from imposter’s syndrome, worry about their sales, feel they still don’t quite hit the mark somehow … I wonder if any writer breaks completely free of those all too human doubts and worries.

My own writing trundles along … writing regular pieces for my parish magazine, composing the odd poem, writing sermons (a very different discipline from creative writing, though) … doing this monthly blog.

The calling to write remains, and I know I should be doing more. (Yes, ACW Spring Competition, I AM looking at you.) My long-term desire is to pray more, give more of myself to God and other people, and in the process, write more … because God gave me that gift, and he would like me to use it.

Keep on keeping on, fellow writers, and trace your rainbows through the rain.*

*With acknowledgement to Scottish minister George Matheson, who wrote the lovely hymn ‘O love that wilt not let me go’ in 1882.

I’m an Anglican lay minister and work full-time for the United Reformed Church as Administrator for their education and learning department. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.