Yesterday, in my ramblings, I extolled the glories of morning light. While evening light is also a great blessing, October in Ohio doesn't not offer us very much evening. The hours of daylight seem to shrink at an alarming rate each week.
But how I love that evening light!
There is something about the light cast by the setting sun that gives even the simplest blossom a resplendence befitting a rare treasure. It is as though the sun, as its parting gift to the earth before it slips away, bathes all things in its own radiant joy.
And so it was that, just over two weeks ago, my camera and I walked to the park down the street to be so bathed in evening light. I brought with me a book of the Scripture readings, marked for the feast day: Guardian Angels. (Even the printed word seemed more alive in the light.)
Allowing the Light to wash over me, I read:
"See, I am sending an angel before you,
to guard you on the way
and bring you to the place I have prepared."
(Exodus 23: 20)
This is extraordinarily consoling news to those of us travelling through the darkness. The One Who is Himself Light has dispatched a guardian to guide us and illumine the treacherous path each of us travels on our journey Home to Him. We are not alone or lost. We are protected and led by messengers of Light.
It is sad that so few of us believe this anymore.
We live in a world that tells us it is foolish to believe in things we cannot see or prove. And yet so much of what gives our life depth or meaning cannot be seen or proven.
Can anyone see love? Can anyone prove beauty? While science may be able to describe light in photons and wavelengths, can it tell me why evening light brings me joy?
Probably somewhere there is scientific study that tries to explain it - but I do not care.
I do not disregard science but neither do I not turn to it for any of the answers that really matter. I no longer march with that army. Rather, I am marching in the Light of God.*
As has been happening to me more and more of late, some words joined with one of the images that I received on that evening walk on the feast of the Angels. Please allow me to share it with you:
Let us allow ourselves to bathed in His light. May it cleanse us of whatever darknesses remain, in or around us, that keep us from seeing His great love.
Let us march on in His light...
* I have embedded for you a YouTube rendition of the Zulu hymn, "Siyahamba". Whether you've heard it a million times before - or never - I suggest you click on the little arrow and listen - or even sing or dance along.
