Tip of My Iceberg

When local meteorologists assume the role of Dougie Downer to let us living in Florida know that this will be a rough hurricane season, the rising winds and darkening clouds make me wonder if IT is coming.

We’ve lived through the effects of hurricanes. Gratefully we don’t live on the coast, so we don’t have the consistency of destruction that coastal towns receive. Flooding, high winds, driving rains leave their mark on our neighborhood. We still have water spots on our ceilings, the reminders of Hurricane Ian–the rain wormed its way through the roof shingles and left its ugly mark that has yet to be dealt with. Water has come in through the windows because of high winds and have buckled the floors.

Our house still stands. Our wonderful tree in the back yard still stands.

We’re grateful.

The dark thunderclouds will continue to roll in, just as night continues to come at the end of the day. It’s the reminder that darkness is part of life.

As a child, I was fearful of the dark, and thunderstorms were the worst because they were not only dark but loud. Fear had no specific definition; it was the worry over what I couldn’t see or anticipate. It was fear of what might be, what might happen. If you don’t know what to expect, how is one to be prepared?

Darkness is the picture of what is hidden, what can be harmful for us. Light exposes what is hidden in gloom and allows everything to be seen for what it is.

Darkness is a consistent theme in literature. It represents the challenges, the rough, the evil. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the famous Russian author wrote in his novel “Crime and Punishment”, “The darker the night, the brighter the stars.” He understood that dark moments are part of life, but there will always be rays of hope that will break through the gloom. Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who kept a diary of her times in hiding from the Gestapo wrote, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” Light will brighten what it touches and can bring hope, such as the kindness of those who hid Anne and her family and friends for so long. That small candle didn’t last. The darkness prevailed when they were discovered and taken to concentration camps.

The greatest proponent of Light in the midst of a dark world was Jesus. “Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, ‘I am the light of the world. If you follow Me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.’” John 8:12. He came to bring hope to a lost and weary world, where we don’t have to be valued by what we do but by His love. He chooses to love us; we get to choose if we’ll receive that love.

As the light of the world, nothing will permanently quench His gifts of good to us. “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” John 1:5.

Storms will come and go, some doing more damage than others. Night happens persistently with each 24-hour cycle. But light, true Light, will always be there, whether we see it in the moment or not. Jesus will not be overwhelmed by the darkness of our lives or of the world.

That’s a guarantee of hope worth holding onto.

photo courtesy of Eyatsu Etsub on Unsplash