“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts’” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Most days, and especially on stressful ones, I try to take a few minutes to leave our apartment for a walk or run around the small pond that’s part of our apartment complex’s landscaping. It doesn’t take long; the pond is less than a minute’s walk from our apartment, and since the distance around the pond is just under half a mile, it also doesn’t take long to walk around. So no matter how busy my day is, when I need a break, I know I can take the time.
And every time I do, it feels like a reset. Today, cardinals and robins flitted in and out of view and squirrels scrambled up nearby trees as I walked to the pond. As I neared, I heard the loud clamor of Canada geese, clearly very worked up about something. They continued to sound the alarm and beat their wings as I walked around the pond before finally calming and quieting. A muskrat digging on the bank scurried into the water as I neared. Ducks ambled pleasantly, nibbling on grass and chattering.
And as I take all of this in, something shifts and quiets inside me.
None of the things unsettling me change during that walk. Time in nature doesn’t cure the ups and downs of mental health. It doesn’t erase global turmoil and pain. I’m still heartsick and worried for my friend in Ukraine and for all of those facing the horrors of war.
But what shifts instead is a physical connection with the reality that I am not alone. I’m part of a world teeming with life, all of it created and held in God’s love.
All of us are.
There’s a lot that can be said about what it means to confess that God is the Creator, but this might be the place to start—that none of us are alone, that all of creation matters to and is cared for by God.
And that when the forces of chaos and death seem to be closing in around us, the God who once said, “Let there be light,” who spoke light, order, and beauty into existence where before there was only emptiness and chaos (Genesis 1:1–3), is still speaking that word of hope and life today (2 Corinthians 4:6).
There’s a poem I often return to on difficult days. Titled “Benediction,” William R. Mitchell’s poem is a prayer for there to be light “in all the nightmare places,” all the places that seem utterly devoid of hope, full of only hunger, desperation, and despair.
So Mitchell pleads for Jesus to bless those trapped in those places in ways he cannot articulate, and for his prayer for them to be merged with God’s powerful word of hope and life: “I have been stammering, let there be light.”
Only the resurrection, the proof of a God who not only created but still creates life out of death, can give us hope for light in these darkest of places.
May we be people who pray for, point to, and pour out our lives for that hope.
–Written by Monica LaRose. Used by permission from the author.
¹William R. Mitchell, “Benediction,” in Acceptable Words: Prayers for the Writer, ed. Gary D. Schmidt and Elizabeth Stickney (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 83.
5 Responses
Thank you for sharing in a time I need it the most. My Hope is in God alone, Father Son and Holy Spirit. I love God with all my heart. I believe he loves me. He saved me and gave me a Hope and a future when I saw no Hope. I have a new life in Christ. I embraced the word Hope since then and when my Pastor ask us to choose a word to anchor us. I have the word placed in my apartment as a reminder. I look for that Hope everyday. I thank our God for Hope. In Jesus Name Amen
I was just thinking about this yesterday after a long busy day of celebration with final school mass, graduation & bridging ceremonies at school, celebratory lunch out with a gift card that I received for my Birthday & was saving for a "special occasion", grocery shopping, taking aluminum cans in for recycling & dealing with a cranky child who didn’t want to participate even though it’s their "fun money", coming home to the mess of unpacking school desk & locker, when there’s still toys, clothes, bedding & a mound of paperwork & tax refunds "still waiting to be received", plus a tired, grumpy husband who comes home from work & falls asleep on the sofa, expecting to be waited on hand & foot for dinner without a clue or a care of how my day has been.
Then, my child pestering me for permission to use an Ipad, to the point of exhaustion & me snapping back, b/c it was taken away until maturity & moderation is learned. We’re not just raising them, they’re raising us too.
As I took an after dinner walk around our neighborhood with wodded areas, kids playing baseball in nearby fields, retention ponds and the highway just on the other side, listening to the birds communicating in the trees, bunnies, squirrels and others scampering and scurrying as I strolled nearby. There was small area of lightly scented white & pinkish colored Phlox growing where raspberry bushes once bursted with fruit.
The sky in the East held dark billowy rain-filled clouds that the wind pushed from the West and the smell of rain was in the air, but there would be no rain here today.
And as I neared the end of my walked & turned to cross the street to our apartment complex, I saw a tiny smidgen of a rainbow in the distance, reminding me of God’s promise to never send a flood & to carry me through my storms, regardless of their origin.
This is beautiful, Monica. I’m so very thankful to our God for not leaving us alone in the darkness. 💚
Great story something about walking and taking in Gods beauty that does something to calm us all!!! I enjoyed this God bless you
It is refreshing to know that I can look to the resurrection of our Savior, Lord Jesus, who gave his life for the sins of humanity. Because he lives, I have hope.