It is already late by the time Randa and I put the leash on Layla and head out for our nightly walk. When we first hit the street, a half-moon is shining through a thin, scalloped cloud. Within a half minute the cloud’s passing finishes a blanketing shroud that domes the surrounding sky.

Even with the light of the moon diffused through the screening drift, there is still a surprising brightness that lets us see more clearly than we expected. We can see yards and trees even in between the spaces of streetlights and yard lights. Ten minutes later as we walk along the gravel of F-Street, we can see the rows of soybeans between the last line of houses and the railroad a half-mile away. I can see the pasture beside the radio station and the posts that set the fence line along its boundary.

I study this mystery of brightness and absorb the quietness of eleven p.m. in a neighborhood of modest homes and dead-end streets. I have seen this before, the hovering of low skies over towns and cities, a gentle halo often visible from thirty or forty miles away. The soft illumination of city lights is held and reflected in the low sky, bringing a surrounding glow to the streets below.

Even in the darkness of a senseless massacre and the ensuing madness of searching for answers and explanations, there is still good in the world. We are not abandoned in the long nights and agonizing days of our most piercing pains and our greatest tragedies. The light of God’s Love still lives in the hearts of those who love him and love others. Though but a dim reflection from flawed and aching lives, its diffuse glow is still brighter than the darkness, still illuminating the care and calling of a higher living. In the midst of angst and anger and our deepest sorrows, the Light still offers hope and comfort and strength for the morrow.

Even when we cannot clearly see the Source, we know its power and presence.

H. Arnett
10/4/17