March 3

            I’ve always liked the verse of the psalm that declares “…the Lord God is a sun and a shield” (Psalms 84:11). But a recent week’s series of encounters with the qualities of the sun gave new depth to that passage.

 

There were in that week bright, sunny days—the kind of winter days I love when the sky is blue, the air crisp, the temperature sharp but not frigid!  It seems on those days like the sun is what makes it all work to make you feel good. Then there were several days of rain—wet, dreary, no sun shining on you with sparkling rays.  They were  the kind of days when you knew that behind  the heavy clouds and pelting rain there was a sun that was impossible to see, but that very knowledge kept you going. Then one day that week it got abysmally foggy—you could scarcely see more than a few feet ahead of you.  The one comfort was that you knew that you could not see even that far were it not  the sun beyond all that fog, emitting light of such intensity that some got through and you could at least see to move forward with caution, and in time that same sun’s heat would burn off the fog.

It all gave profound meaning to the psalmist’s declaration that God is like the sun.  God’s love and light make cold and hot days alike alive with zest. And on those days when troubles and perils make for stormy, even fearful living, it is the fact that the things that imperil us like a torrential rain are not greater than the light and promise of God’s loving providence.  And when we can’t see through the fog of moral confusion, God is still the light that enables us to see far enough to keep going, and we know that, at last, that light will overcome the fog we can’t resolve.

Give thanks that God is so-o-o like the sun and more! His light never fails.