Filling the rainbow

When I was a small girl, a family friend offered to paint a mural on my bedroom wall. I wanted a rainbow with a pot of gold. She drew the design on the pale yellow wall, and then one thing or another came up, and she never painted it in. Until we repainted a few years later, I could see the faded pencil lines of that empty rainbow whenever I lay down in my bed.

People often tell me their sorrows, their anxieties, their regrets. I say I will pray for them, and I do, but it feels like so little. I want to offer them the fullness of God's healing, the bright promise that God painted over the sky after the flood. What I have to offer feels as incomplete as those faint lines on the wall.

Lord, I only know the barest outline of your plan for this world. Let me trust that in your loving time, you will bring us all the colors of joy. Amen.