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The Light Persists

 A few weeks ago, there was a total solar eclipse. There have only been 15 visible in various parts of the United States in the last 150 years, making it a once in a lifetime experience for many. The anticipatory excitement was palpable, parties were planned, venues were booked out months in advance; the metroplex experienced a shortage of porta-potties due to the influx of visitors, all flocking here to witness the miraculous workings of the universe. At the moment of totality, when the world was cast into darkness, there was a collective gasp. Then crowds erupted in exclamations of wonder. High fives, fist bumps, and hugs were abundant as on-lookers basked in the ordered glory of the laws of physics. 



As the minutes stretched on, a soul-deep quiet settled.The world stilled. We breathed as one. Some put hands to their hearts as our infinite smallness grew under the umbrella of that moment, when time and space stood still.


Suddenly, with a burst of light, the spell was broken as the world was washed anew in color and life. It was all anyone could talk about for days – Did you see the eclipse? Wasn’t it amazing? Can you believe how dark it was? – and everyone scrambled for adequate words to describe their experience of the divine, to make meaning of what they had witnessed. 


Similarly, we each have eclipses in our lives; these moments of darkness where all we know is cast into irregular shadows. Some of us only experience these types of eclipses, like the one experienced by this area of the map on April 8th, once in their lifetime. For me, it seems that my life has been a back-to-back series of such events. However, unlike scientists with a solar eclipse, I cannot calculate or predict when these times are coming nor how long they will last. Unlike during a solar eclipse, there usually isn’t a host of people there with me witnessing the order of things or holding their breath with me until the light returns, pondering on the meaning of it all, stalwartly standing beside me as I wait the darkness out.


Humans say ‘totality’ to describe these moments of darkness during an eclipse, when the moon in its fullness comes between us and the sun. And yet, in the eclipse events in my life, the darkness is never totally complete;  in these moments of totality, though shadows fall and darkness obscures my view, when the whole of life’s messy, painful, uncontrollable chaos covers the light, even then, the darkness is not my totality. The Light persists.


You see the Son, in His infinite glory, can never be completely hidden, despite the relentless attempts of chaos with the full force of its entirety to block His light. The Son with all His boundless mercy and love in His relentless pursuit of His children, cannot be contained from reaching me.


His Light persists.


And so can I.

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