When I was a student, the church I belonged to regularly organised missions to towns across the south of England. The aim was to share the Christian good news with those who hadn’t heard it. In my second year as an undergraduate, I offered to join such a mission team. As a result, I found myself talking to a young man who had just come to faith. It was a really exciting conversation, but I really wasn’t all sure what to say. So, I asked the vicar. “Show him some of God’s great promises in the Bible,” he told me. That sounded like a great idea. But, what were these great promises? Suddenly my mind went a complete blank.

I hope that I did manage to offer some encouraging words. But I came away realising how little I knew about what was really in the Bible – and even less about where to find those encouraging passages in Scripture. So, I bought myself a brand new copy of the Bible – one with nice wide margins – and started to read some of it each day. But I didn’t just read it; I kept a pen and some coloured pencils next to me. Every time I reached one of the Bible’s great promises, I drew a little rainbow in the margin next to it. The rainbow seemed like an appropriate symbol as it reminded me of God’s promise to Noah after the flood. It wasn’t just rainbows I drew, though. I devised other symbols to represent God’s love, Christ’s death, the Holy Spirit, creation, sin, water, new life and so on. Each time I found a verse that mentioned one of these things, I’d draw the appropriate image next to it.