In the Darkness There is Light

Sometimes I take a look around, I take a moment to breathe, and I am lost.  I’m left wondering how our hearts are supposed to hold the sorrow of this world.  How we can look despair in the face and stand back up.  How we can see hearts breaking and remain whole.  How we can stay open and conscious and not crumble.

It’s hard to understand a world where teenagers are taken in a car on a dark road in too much fog and their families are left to make a life without them.  It’s hard to understand a world where a little girl with life in her eyes and love in her heart has to lay her head on her pillow tonight and fall asleep in a world her father no longer resides in.

I try to understand.  I try to rationalize and analyze and come to grips.  And yet I can’t.  Because on this side of the divide, these are senseless happenings.  They are undeserved sorrows.  They are hills no one should have to climb.

And yet we all do it.  Tragedy is not new and it’s not over and it’s not limited to one corner of the world.  It’s all around us, as real as the air we breathe and the ground we tread upon.

I went to a prayer service tonight.  It was quiet and peaceful and holy.  Very, very holy.  I looked around and everywhere I turned, heads were bowed, hands we clasped in prayer.  Prayer for the victims of tragedy.  Prayer for the mother who has to raise four children on her own.  Prayer for children who need to learn to live without their dad.

And I couldn’t help but feel confused.

During times of sadness, how are people so trusting in God?  How do they lift up their prayers and trust that they are heard?  How do they trust that their petitions aren’t in vain?

And moreover, how do they trust at all when tragedy exists?  How do they say, we accept this, Your will be done?

And then I realized that it’s not about it making sense.  It’s not about figuring it all out.  It’s not about knowing the reasons or enjoing the means.

It’s about knowing that there is a purpose because in the still, quiet moments we hear a voice inside our souls whispering to us.  It’s about trusting that voice.  It’s about believing that the God who died on a cross for us will use pain to come to grace.  It’s about trusting that the fire will purify and cleanse and protect.

It’s not about understanding.  It never has been.

We will never understand why we have peace while others live in war, why we have plenty and others have few, why we sleep in peace while others mourn losses we cannot even fathom.

We live our lives with the blinders of our station.  We live our today, we see what is within our sights, we hear as far as our ears can reach.  And that is it.

For the rest, we must give up the fight for understanding and instead fight the battle of trust.  We need to learn humility and know that our ways are flawed and our knowing limited.  We need to learn acceptance of that which we despise and remember that at times we despise because we do not understand.  We need to learn grace, realizing that in this broken and limited and sometimes blindingly sad world, the only gifts we have to give are trust in God and grace towards each other.

We aren’t mean to know it all and control it all and run it as we see fit.  We are meant to do the next best thing and trust God to lead us to the rest.  Through the darkness.  Through the sorrow.  Through the pain.  Until one day we wake up in perpetual light.