The last verse of Psalm 23 begins with, “Surely goodness will follow me all the days of my life.”
A drawing my oldest daughter gave to me a few years ago stares at me from across my classroom every day from its place on the mini-fridge. It’s a drawing of her, her sister, and me. We are outside during a rainstorm, they with umbrellas and I with a large rainbow on my head as if it were a hat. It found its way there about a week and a half ago, and I truly can’t tell you why that happened. I stumbled across it and just felt like that’s where it needed to go, so that’s where it has been.
Like most parents, I receive drawings like this quite often and don’t save all of them. Typically, the ones I hold onto are the ones that speak to me. And typically, the ones I keep in my field of vision are the ones God wants to use to speak to me in that particular season. Such is the case here. I have hung onto this drawing because of what she shared about it when she first gave it to me: we were in a rainstorm with umbrellas, but then a rainbow came and rested on my head. For good reason, God wants me to see this frequently throughout the day.
Storms are required for rainbows to appear, and they always precede the appearance of rainbows. That is to say, rainbows follow storms. I know that rainbows are a reminder of God’s promise to never flood the earth again, but I believe they also are simply a reminder of God’s faithfulness, which manifests through the completion of all of His promises.
In my experience, His promises are fulfilled after I participate. Created for relationship with Him, He invites me into His promises as a participant in their realization. Sometimes, that means I am to be still and trust. Other times, that means I am to rise to whatever occasion He has called me to. No matter what the promise, how it is comes to be fulfilled, or what my role is in its realization, there is one thing that is always true: His goodness - seen through His faithfulness in keeping His promises - follows me, because my faith, like the rains, precedes the promise seen in His rainbow.