Reclaiming the Rainbow
A stream of bright colours which emerges triumphantly out of and over the darkest of clouds: the rainbow makes a brilliant and evocative emblem. 1960's hippies painted it on their VW campers. A recent political equality movement adopted the spectrum of colours to represent their understanding of diversity. Now many children are putting images of rainbows in their windows as a symbol of hope amid the crisis of a global pandemic. This 'new' use of the rainbow is actually very 'old'. In the ancient biblical story of Noah, God saw that the world was getting lost in an ever increasing whirlpool of sin and depravity. He decided to put a stop to this self-imposed cycle of human violence by sending a great flood which would destroy everything except a boat full of people and animals. There was plenty of warning but, tragically, in the end only Noah and his family boarded the rescue ship. To keep them safe, God locked them into this 'ark' for 40 days and 40 nigh...