The Light She Never Turned Off

Margaret Huang installed the porch light three days after her son David came home. He'd been gone for eleven days — no phone call, no note, just an empty bedroom and a silence that nearly broke her. When he finally walked through the door at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, gaunt and ashamed, she held him without saying a word.

But here's what the neighbors noticed: Margaret replaced the old porch bulb with a bright amber fixture, and she never turned it off. Not after David enrolled back in school. Not after he graduated. Not after he got married and moved to Portland. Twenty years later, that light still burns on Maple Street, and everyone on the block knows why.

"It's not for him," Margaret once told a neighbor. "It's for me. So I never forget what I promised."

That is the heartbeat of Genesis 9. When God set the rainbow in the sky after the floodwaters receded, He didn't say, "This is so you'll remember." He said, "I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant" (Genesis 9:16). The Almighty, who cannot forget, chose a visible sign — not because He needed reminding, but because He wanted His children to know the promise was permanent, unconditional, and woven into the very fabric of the sky. Every rainbow is God's porch light, still burning — for you.