By Drew Williams
Sentinel Columnist
Last week I described a time in my life when, in the company of people who cared very much for us, it gradually dawned on me that the love of God had come to seek me out. Several things then began to happen and all at the same time. To begin with, I realized that I was in the wrong vocation. This came as a shock, especially to my wife. Second, I wanted for other people what I had discovered of God’s love. This was a shock to me.
One of those souls now heavy on my heart was a good friend of ours who had been our neighbor back in London. It was a time of her life when she had been horribly let down. She listened graciously to what I shared but would always end with, “But how do I know that God would not abandon me?” Within this loaded question were at least two deeper questions: how can I know what you are saying is not some phantom of your well-meaning but deluded imagination, and, if it is true, who am I that God could care for me. I so wanted her to experience what I had, but I knew I could not manufacture that. All I could do was earnestly pray for her.
And so I did. I found this old tree about a five-minute drive from my law office in the heartlands of Devon. It was at the top of a field with a fine view across the valley. Perhaps even more spectacular was the dappled sunlight that flooded the grass beneath its shady boughs. The priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “Glory be to God for dappled things…” and that mosaic of light that shifted and shimmered on the radius of grass beneath “my” tree either was the glory of God, or it was doing a very fine impression of the glory of God. It felt like my own private cathedral. And so throughout the summer, here I escaped and prayed very hard for a lot of things, including my friend and my ordination papers that had now been submitted to the Church of England.
By November little had changed. In fact, it felt like my friend had become more resistant and I had heard nothing from the Church of England. I dared not chase them as they had made it clear that patience was a virtue they were looking for in a candidate. I had also been told that “Like the mighty tortoise moves the Anglican House.” So I bit my lip, said nothing and waited. Then one day I got a call. “Drew,” the voice began, “sorry you have not heard from us, but we have just discovered that your papers fell down the back of a filing cabinet—lost and gathering dust!” I encouraged the caller that now that my application papers were found perhaps we could move things along a bit. “Have patience, dear boy!” came the kind but stern response.
So I took my impatience back to my tree. By now it was late fall and the landscape was very bleak. One day I made my way to the top of the field in the pouring rain. I was so wet, it looked like I had jumped in a lake. My timber cathedral looked bare and austere. I felt utterly lost and dejected. I surmised that God had forgotten me, too. Arriving at my tree, I practically at once spun around to make the sodden journey back to the car. But as I did so, I almost fell backwards with the shock of what was before me. There in the charcoal gray sky was the most beautiful and vivid rainbow I had ever seen. It was almost as if someone had taken a knife and slashed a tear in the blackened sky so that light and color could be seen in the gash.
At the same time, I had this curious sense of a description of a Psalm. I can’t tell you why, but “Psalm 27, verses 13 and 14” was so clearly etched on my mind that it would not leave me. These were the days when my Bible knowledge was very rudimentary and on the subject of Psalms my biggest question was why the word began with the letter “P.” So I made my way down the hill and into the dry of the car, and pulled a pocket Bible out of the glove compartment. I discovered these words of promise in verses 13 and 14 of Psalm 27: “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” It felt like a letter from a loving Father. It certainly hit my heart in this way.
I was so wet, I was steaming up the windows of my car and it was possible that I would soon generate my own rainbow in the interior of the vehicle. I also had to get to the local railroad station to collect the friend I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. And of course, as soon as she got into the car her first question was, “Did someone push you in a river?” I was nervous that she might think I was crazy, but I also felt honor-bound to tell her the story. Her response surprised me. She wept—really sobbed. Between her tears she told me that she had also seen this extraordinary rainbow from the train and had followed it for miles. She had wondered if God might be encouraging her with this spectacle but did not quite have the faith to believe that.
She asked me to read the Psalm again. I did so: “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27: 13-14). She said, “Do you think that promise is for me too?” I said that I was sure it was. And so for the first time, we prayed together in my car. She said that she knew she had come home and she also knew that she would never again be alone. Her life has never been the same.
John Shea wrote, “There are signs of [God’s] presence. People find them in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. They are open to argument and refutation but their impact on the ones who receive them can only be welcomed.” I have often thought back to that day with something of the same conclusion. The long walk in the rain to the top of the hill and to my bare tree, my frondescently challenged prayer chapel, was crazy! And yet if I had not gone, I would have missed that rainbow.
All I can tell you is I approached the rest of the ordination process with a lot more patience and faith. I had been drenched to the skin and yet in that drenching God gave me something not only for myself, but for a friend who desperately needed to know that she was not alone and in His great love, would never be so again. In a hymn that has long fed my soul, George Matheson wrote, “O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to Thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be.”
Drew Williams is senior pastor of Trinity Church in Greenwich.
