Seeing the Light Before the Sunrise.

The tune I sing is simple and familiar to me in times of uncertainty.  I hum it yet again while running through another pitch-black morning toward home.  “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…” Only sometimes I pick up the pace and hum a little louder to fend off the cougars and snakes that are surely waiting for me in the brush.  Breathe; home is just a half-mile away, I think to myself.  Look!  There’s a glimmer of light just over the horizon! Perhaps this inky blackness won’t hang around all day after all.  Inhale, exhale, I’m almost home.

The clocks may have sprung forward, but the mornings are dark again and my heart is heavy with a sense that the world around me too is in the midst of stumbling backwards.  Hurting people everywhere blinking, trying to adjust pupils to the unexpected gloom and desperate for a pinprick of light as they grope for a hand to hold in unfamiliar territory (preferably one without fur or scales).

 Am I the only one who feels they’ve been living in winter for far too long?  I wonder, could we just be done with the wind-knocking exhale, please, and move on to some fresh air and a great big gasp?  While your winter may have been slightly different from mine, winter is winter, my friends, and it’s something we all experience.  These days I’m horizon watching for the light to show itself earlier and earlier each day; expectant eyes more than ready to see a marching lion, paws loaded with hope rays to be slung through my dirty windowpanes.  I invite you to pull off your sleep mask and watch the seasons change with me.  And rest assured, the One who calculated the earth’s tilt and adjusted rotation dials with such accuracy that we can set our plowshares and watches by it, will, as in centuries past, come through once again.  Days will lengthen, bulbs will burst forth, and the creeks will rise to nourish the wind-swept land back to life.  The consistency of the seasons changes not.  What is happening now has happened before and we can have faith that this season of waking up in darkness too shall pass.

 

But, if you feel as though your faith has been rode hard and put up wet, so to speak, know this:  Just as you can sense the wind before it hits your skin or see the light before a sunrise, remember that “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark” (Tagore).  There’s a familiar tune rattling around in our heads and our hearts somewhere just waiting to pierce the darkness.  Hum it.  Then hum it a little louder.  And watch the cougars and the snakes flee.

Then pick your head up off the pillow and invite some little rays of sunshine in your life to join you at the party.  It’s being held at the Powell Butte Elementary School on Saturday, April 3^rd at 10:30 am in the form of an Easter Egg Hunt and Canned Food Drive sponsored by the Crook County Choppers 4-H Club.

Oh, and please accept my sincerest apologies for the song that will now be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.