Sunset

In Sunset After a Storm on the Coast of Sicily, a lone figure (near the bottom middle) wearily pulls a group of people ashore in a boat. As indicated by the waves on the left, they must have been through a harrowing and exhausting journey, narrowly escaping with their lives. The shore looks equally inhospitable: have they survived one trial only to be put through another?

Yet the figures’ dire circumstance is not what you see first. Even though darkness surrounds the figures, it is offset by the more powerful and captivating light of the sun. The clouds seem to be clearing. Night approaches, but the yellow glow is there, indicating hope in the hearts of the people.

If I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as bright as the day. To you darkness and light are one. (Psalm 139:11-12) A very hard thing for us western Christians to understand. Darkness and light are one. I find it comforting, because it means to me that the evil and good that I have done, and that have been done to me, are all of one whole. All part of a unity of the plan, purpose, and being of God.

Where do I look back and see the unity of dark and light, good and bad, in my life? How might this vision bring me wholeness? 

Be with me in the sunset, O Lord, as I move through the dark and the light. Amen.  

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As I approach my last Sunday as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Morris Plains, I reflect on the many memories of people serving God together. So much of the journey has been about developing more awareness. Of ourselves as a congregation, of the needs and challenges of ministry in the 21st century, and ultimately, of God's presence and activity in our lives.

This devotional—Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello—is a new discovery for me. I will be keeping it close for awhile. I just got through reading a section on why, in pursuit of awareness, you cannot make demands. "Someday you will understand that simply by awareness you have already attained what you were pushing yourself toward."

I am aware to very great and deep extent that I contributed to a culture early in my tenure here, and which I never quite managed to escape, of demands and counter demands, of pushing zealously toward goals rather than meeting life with acceptance and grace.

I am grateful to God and to the congregation that despite this, we were given the gift of many fruitful ministries, many great conversations about God's work, and many times of active service together. We grew together, in our understanding of who we are before God and in recognizing our calling as his created people. As the church moves into its new chapter, I now believe it has a bright hope, as the painting suggests, of a good and fortuitous dawn.