The other weekend Sue, myself and a few friends (the famous 5, Nina, Sue, Bob, Dave and myself) decided that we would enjoy the beautiful Lancashire countryside on our feet. Nina had a book of nice walks so off we went to Hurst Green, home of Stonyhurst College. The walk had it all, hills, villages, rivers, woods and all for 6 miles of effort.

As we walked from the village up to the college we weren’t sure what the weather was going to do, typical for Lancashire on October. As we started the walk down the lane towards the college it started to rain, but within minutes it had stopped and the sun had come out. Perfect weather for rainbows and sure enough there one was arching right across the top of the college.

All the colour were there. How do you remember them again?

Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.

Or is it:

Richard of York gave battle in vain

The colours were fabulous however you remember them, so rich  and vibrant. It was almost like an archway of coloured glass spread across the sky.

Rainbows always remind me of Noah and the flood. Right at the end of the flood, just as things were starting to dry out God reaffirmed his commitment to Noah and his family using a rainbow:

Then God spoke to Noah and his sons: “I’m setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you, along with everything alive around you—birds, farm animals, wild animals—that came out of the ship with you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth.”

God continued, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.”

Genesis 9

A rainbow is a sign to remind us of a promise. It’s a sign of God’s commitment to everything living – that includes you. What a blessing.

We learnt another lesson from our walk. After we had passed the college the walk became a little interesting. The guide book said that we need to walk 1/2 mile down one particular road before we came to a cross-roads. Anyway, we walked 1/2 mile with no end in sight and the nearest road we could see was a long way away. Unfortunately we had only taken the book and not a real proper, to scale, map. The map in the book turned out to have been drawn by someone who doesn’t understand scale. Instead of carrying on regardless we took a different route down to the river Hodder and the lovely walk along the banks. We then started the “short” walk back to the village which turned out to be another marathon. When we got back and looked at a real Ordnance Survey map the first 1/2 mile to the cross-roads was more like 1 1/2 miles and the “short” walk back to the village was another 1 1/2 miles. Rather than being 6 miles the walk would have been nearer to 8 miles. We’ll remember a proper map next time .