‘My heart leaps up,’ wrote Wordsworth. And why, we may ask? He answers: ‘When I behold a rainbow in the sky.’ An analysis of light not just in a lab but in plain sight for all to see is indeed spectacular.
Most of us have seen fewer rainbows than we have eaten breakfasts. And fewer, probably, have seen the Northern Lights. They don’t get a mention in the Bible, any more than do the Niagara Falls or the Severn Bore. But it’s all a question of latitude and local limitations. Perhaps if the incarnation had taken place nearer the equator those who knew about the Smoke that Thunders would have had a story to tell even before the name ‘Victoria Falls’ had shaken us up. Think of the surprise Alexander’s men when on the shores of India they saw the rides rise and fall as had never happened back in the Mediterranean, the centre of the earth as far as they were concerned.
Leaping hearts are not part of the vocabulary of administrators and economists. ‘The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of,’ said Pascal. Keats tells us that Cortez’ men looked at the Pacific and then at each other ‘with a wild surmise’. No European had had his heart so stirred before.
The biblical writer saw the rainbow and understood it to be a sign of the covenant between God and man that there should be no great flood of the kind Noah had suffered. He, we are told, lived to be 950 years old when he died. As well as being given a multi-coloured pledge, he must have seen eclipses and other natural phenomena from which he could draw conclusions.
We know a lot more today about planets, constellations and galaxies than ever the writers of the Scriptures knew. We know too more about geology and the formation of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. We have records of Krakatoa. Polar bears and penguins are in our childhood stories. So are kangaroos and dinosaurs.
But along with the leaping hearts that respond to rainbows and other natural phenomena we have to place John Wesley’s heart-warming experience with the Moravians. This had an authentication of its own. Knowledge, understanding, enlightenment comes from all quarters. We have to be open to surprises. Think of the credence we give to the convincing nature of the experience we call ‘falling in love’.
BEDHAMPTON REFURBISHMENT
‘Our church is made up of imperfect people with every kind of story imaginable,’ says the website of the Bedhampton, Havant churches of St Thomas and St Nicholas. A £116,000 refurbishment of St Nicholas’s hall is under way. The Rector is Max Cross.
POP-UP SHOP
A one pound a bag pop-up shop at St Peter and St Paul church, teamed up with St Andrew’s and St Nicholas’s, Felixstowe opens every Thursday supplying food from local supermarkets and other sources.
PENTAGONAL
Much admired as an example of modern church design is St Mark’s, Gabalfa, Cardiff. Built in 1968 after a new road plan involved the demolition of an old building, the church has a pentagonal plan and a striking tower. Further improvements have been made to the building in recent years. The church says it is all about Jesus. Leading the ministry team is Marcus Nelson.
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