Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more;
The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end.
Isaiah 61:20
Last week I received some difficult news. The adult daughter of the elderly man I care for each week was tragically killed while driving back home after several days spent here in town meeting the needs of her 92 year old mother.
She’s a wife and mother of two grown sons and co-owner of the business she and her husband manage.
Tragic loss.
Sudden death.
The victim of road rage.
Rear-ended on I-40.
Senseless…heartache.
In the midst of the news, the sky was brilliant and clear. Fall weather crisp with the delicious color of turning leaves all around. The promise of cooler temperatures.
God’s masterpiece.
Breathtakingly beautiful, really.
The kind of day that makes me beg,
“Lord, make it always be this way.”
Yet within the walls of the house that’d learned of such great tragedy, sorrow ran deep.
A ceiling fan light adequately illuminated the family room where a bitter mixture of shocked silence and sobbing ensued.
The following day, driving past random houses, I wondered,
What if I could remove the roof from each of these houses and peek inside. What would I encounter?
A man and woman together in bed, enjoying marital bliss?
A couple engaging in the same only each is married to another, infidelity succumbing to flames of passion?
A family on their knees, offering thanks for answered prayer?
A father with raging fist mid-air, only a few feet from his rebellious teen?
The welcome sound of laughter as friends gather around the flat screen cheering for the Astros to win the World Series? (Please, oh please)
No matter the activities within the houses I’d passed, the sun persisted as God, the Creator, so ordered. It shone its blinding radiance. Bright and full, pulsing warmth like a kiss against my cheeks.
The life-giving, ancient orange orb was merely a reminder of His presence and brings me reassurance that He is sovereign over all things.
That includes the vulnerable driver and the one in her rearview mirror, hell-bent on rage taking the wheel.
But even when the accident occurred that late evening, the sun remained shining. It always does. No matter the depth of sorrow below its reach. God is forever on His throne, engineering the whole of His creation.
Last week, the sun shined on sorrow.
It shines on sorrow today.
And in eternity, the sun will no longer set. It’ll hang high and bright like a perpetual season of fall as it did when tragic news arrived.
In those days, the Lord will be my everlasting light and my days of sorrow – your days of sorrow – will end.
May this promise bring radiance to the dark places of sorrow you’ve walked, are walking now, or may encounter in days to come.
Mary
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