Recently I was journaling about what I love in response to a journal prompt. In that list I wrote I love God who gives us so much. Part of that list included “mountains and beaches and meadows and rocky places”. All places of beauty and creation. Given my recent day at the Grand Canyon, the contrast between meadows and rocky places really struck me. In my mental picture, meadows are lush and green—soft, usually with a brook of some sort and butterflies flitting around countless wildflowers. As I was imagining that, the rocky places of the Grand Canyon came to mind. They are hard and harsh. Little grows there, and the flowers were few and the streams and brooks fewer.

What the canyon did have was the ability to show light and dark. Clouds allowed shadows to form and the beams of light highlighted one area, then another. It was ever changing.

The space was more vast than what could be seen in any meadow. It gave a better sense that at times we are in the light. Life is good, things are going our way. It also showed the shadowed places. The places that the sun couldn’t quite reach. However, the perspective allowed us to see that the clouds didn’t stay. The shadows don’t last forever. It also showed that while some people are in the light, others are in darkness.

How aware am I each day I am in the light that others are in darkness? How aware am I when I am in a dark place that others are in even more of a dark place? What a good reminder for us, that no matter what is going on or how bad it may seem, that from an eternal perspective, it won’t last forever. And just like the sun sets at night and rises in the morning, our God is indeed faithful!

Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy. (Ps. 65:8)

Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”  (John 8:12)

Rev. Shannon Jordan

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