LAID out in all its splendour just beyond one of Saddam Hussein's palaces was once the fabulous Garden of Eden.

Not that I know the Garden's exact spot.

It's just that Saddam's got so many royal abodes that the garden bordered by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris couldn't have been far from one of them.

Just think: the King of Kings reigned here long before mini-dictators, and humans walked hand-in-hand with him. As the bombs fall, that comforts me.

Near another of Saddam's palaces, a chap called Noah once got a final, final ultimatum. God was so fed up with humanity's inhumanity and their misuse of free will, that he'd decided to bomb the place with water.

Aweeping, sad Creator then cradled eight remaining humans in an ark - Noah plus close kin - saving them for a new start. Overarching the finale of this flood drama, his never-say-die love shimmered into a glorious rainbow.

The flood waters receded, and Noah's Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, on the Turkish/Iraq border. Across what is now a no-fly zone, and over a Gulf that thinks it's hell, arched the multicolour sign of an all-powerful, all-protecting God.

Whenever the rainbow appears I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures (Genesis 9)

The sign language of that rainbow shouts one thing to me this weekend: those who put mere missiles and war planes in the sky are not, ultimately, the ones in charge.

The One who made and paints the sky with glorious Technicolor is.

Saturday Message

The Rev Kevin Logan, Christ Church, Accrington