"April showers" is convenient shorthand for a month in which temperatures and types of weather often seesaw from one seasonal extreme to another. Yesterday was mostly heavy rain, including hail, and grey chilliness. Today is as yet undecided: cold, with bursts of sunshine - though not quite enough to cast any heat - amid a general cloudiness. But Monday... ah, Monday was filled with the remains of the warmth and spring sunshine we had enjoyed all weekend. It was a day to lure me out for a late lunchtime stroll around the LDO centre in Wembley. Like so many new developments it's mainly a square, soulless place, all plate glass, metal and concrete, though relieved by a couple of piazzas and play areas, and the occasional bit of green.
And emerging into the large space behind the civic centre, I was greeted by sun-dazzled water, splashing and spraying and transforming the unremitting greyness of its surroundings into somewhere I wanted to stop and sit in. Here was magic and sparkle, with excited children getting gloriously drenched while adults sat contentedly, lazily by, chatting or reading.
And here, for a few brief, enchanting minutes - a mini-rainbow! My first, incredulous thought was that it had to be some kind of special effect, caused by coloured lights embedded within the feature; but as I drew closer I could see that it was, indeed, a rainbow, hazily, magically suspended just a few feet from the ground, and vanishing into... somewhere, nowhere. A little rainbow - not a great magnificent one arching, unreachably, high above us - but at our level, almost touchable, here among us, in the midst of plate glass and soulless concrete. Rather like the God whose covenant it signifies: not an unreachable deity but Emmanuel, God-with-us, among us, delighting us and transforming even what is hardest and most soulless. And that, of course, is what lies at the very heart of God's eternal promise...
And emerging into the large space behind the civic centre, I was greeted by sun-dazzled water, splashing and spraying and transforming the unremitting greyness of its surroundings into somewhere I wanted to stop and sit in. Here was magic and sparkle, with excited children getting gloriously drenched while adults sat contentedly, lazily by, chatting or reading.And here, for a few brief, enchanting minutes - a mini-rainbow! My first, incredulous thought was that it had to be some kind of special effect, caused by coloured lights embedded within the feature; but as I drew closer I could see that it was, indeed, a rainbow, hazily, magically suspended just a few feet from the ground, and vanishing into... somewhere, nowhere. A little rainbow - not a great magnificent one arching, unreachably, high above us - but at our level, almost touchable, here among us, in the midst of plate glass and soulless concrete. Rather like the God whose covenant it signifies: not an unreachable deity but Emmanuel, God-with-us, among us, delighting us and transforming even what is hardest and most soulless. And that, of course, is what lies at the very heart of God's eternal promise...
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