What Then?

It's evening and I'm following a friend across the bluffs lining the pacific ocean. We weave through dry, desert brush, and pass prickly pear cacti that offer their red fruit to us with outstretched arms. The warm wind teases and tousles and we breath deep delight.

And Dusk, she joins us. She sings us her evening song, quietly at first. The music steals low and velvety across the bluffs, just behind the wind, and then it paints the distant mountains purple.

Lights twinkle in the city below, and the song, it grows louder. And as the sun falls lower, the song swells fuller, till the sky bursts into crimson flame from the song's piercing melodic strain, and the waves clap and the trees whisper awe.

And we stand in silence and watch the sea swallow the sun. I listen close, and my soul sounds grateful peace.

It's easy to feel at peace when the sky dances with light and the sea is shining silent.

And it's easy to feel at peace when bodies are healthy, and hearts are no longer grieving, and our country is free, and friendships are satisfying, and the future is full of opportunities.

But the darkness, it was just here last night, and I know, even as the sky streaks glory, that the black of night will come again.

And what then? When the inky darkness weighs heavy, and hearts ache fierce, and the future seems a burden? What then, when sin colors ugly and shoots sorrow, and things aren't the way they're supposed to be?

I turn and look behind me at the darkening bluff covered in dead brush, and then I look back at the blazing sky and sinking sun.

And I whisper how the sky is always there, and the waves they always churn, and the sun it always sets, and dusk, she always sings,

And even when we are faithless God is faithful because he cannot deny himself.

© by scj