Take a moment to watch this video from the 1960 classic Disney movie, Pollyanna starring the indelible Hayley Mills as Pollyanna, a young girl sent to live with her tight-laced aunt after the death of her missionary parents. For those of you who may not have seen Mills’ Disney debut, I highly recommend checking it out. The town is peopled with quirky characters, petty squabbles, and a lot of heart beneath it all.
I grew up watching this movie and remembered this scene while working on our Lenten theme, “A Rainbow of Promises.” Pollyanna takes her friend and fellow orphan Jimmy Bean to show him the rainbow makers at the house of the local curmudgeon Mr. Pendergast. It’s easy to see the cracks in Mr. Pendergast’s tough exterior when faced with the delight and childlike wonder of Jimmy and Pollyanna as they fill the room with rainbows. In the clip Pollyanna references making rainbows with Mrs. Snow, another of the town’s prickly characters. You can watch that scene here.
In each of these clips I appreciate how even the crankiest characters have to try hard to hide their smiles at the beauty of rainbows dancing on their walls. Further validation of my childhood story of how a rainbow is not just a sign of God’s promise but is also an instrument of God’s care.
It’s what I said on Sunday. After proclaiming my own love of rainbows, I wonder who doesn’t stop, if only for a minute, to marvel at the beauty of a rainbow however small or big. A rainbow is the beautiful meeting place of art and science. It’s refracted light as Mr. Pendergast explains but it’s also a prism painting colors as Pollyanna describes. The line between art and science (if there is one at all) is very thin. It’s like Van Gogh’s most famous painting Starry Night depicting turbulent air many years before science models would reveal the same swirling patterns.
As this beautiful interplay of science and art, rainbows remind us that we too are both holy works of art and marvels of science. And as this living breathing beautiful work of art and science, you have the power to be a rainbow maker—to shine hope into lonely places, to be a good neighbor, and find delight in the everyday miracles all around us.
Pastor Annette