Darkness and light sit so well next to each other and yet the difference is as shocking as going from a sauna to an ice bath. The days are enfolded with the mystery and majesty of God’s glory and in the midst of those two divine aspects is the reality that a day, an hour and week and a life can flow back and forth between darkness and light so easily.
There is a part of me that wishes that it was always light, always bright, clear diamonds and never dark, blue sapphires. I want only goodness in my life, only clarity, only happiness, only kindness, only success, only right choices, only clarity, only good news. And yet life seems woven like a marbled rye with the light and dark allowing badness, sin, failed choices, obscured awareness, unkindness, and bad news.
When I try to explain why bad things happen, I often use cloves as my metaphor. Cloves are hard to eat ground on a spoon. They are bitter and chalky. But refrain from adding that same spoon of cloves to an apple pie and there will be a darkness and definition missing. And so too with life.
So when hard days or hard hours or hard minutes or hard seasons come our way, we curl up into God, sitting with that candle in the darkness and waiting for God’s tender hand to cup our jaw and asure us that we are good, we are loved, we are cherished and we sparkle in His light even without the sun.
