I have a tiny treasure with history. It is a small cup about the size of an egg-cup but with delicately fluted sides and a pretty flower pattern inside and out. It is of no use for anything practical but I keep it and love it because it reminds me of my mother. She bought it for me long ago simply as a token of her love. Every time I see the little cup, I remember her.
It seems to talk about her whenever someone asks about it.
Most people cherish reminders of people or places from the past and you feel a tremendous privilege when someone opens a treasure to you and shares a deep memory. You never take it for granted or treat it with contempt and you value the shared memory.
I was thrilled when I discovered that God also has a token from the past. Like us, he has a token that reminds him of something precious from the past.
He came very close to wiping human beings off the planet so he put his token up for everyone to see.
He was talking with Noah and he had just promised he would never again send a flood over the whole earth. He put up the rainbow as a sign of this covenant but there was something else he wanted to remember.
He said of the rainbow, ‘I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant.’
It reminds God that the Father, the Creator and the Holy Spirit said together before they made mankind, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,’ and the man and the woman were to rule the earth and everything in it. Genesis 1:26-31. It was an everlasting covenant because it was made between three everlasting beings. It was not made with people who could be destroyed by flood, fire or devastation.
So God’s token to himself is the rainbow in the sky. It is untouchable and incorruptible, and he treasures it as a token of his everlasting love to you and me.
Elizabeth Price