Skip to main content

Ex Umbra In Solem

Walking one day at dusk, I remember seeing the shadows of streetlamps, cast lightly on white concrete as the sun set. I remembered then a verse from James: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." It wasn't particularly Earth-shattering to me at the time; but now, when I remember those times in my life when I knew little else but uncertainty and confusion, I have to consider just how much the stability expressed in that verse offered to me, and just how sustained I truly was. Maybe it was because I felt such suffuse insecurity that I couldn't see the larger plan God had-- and has-- through it all; but I tend to believe, now, that God truly does "work for the good of those who love him," even when they aren't really loving him at the moment. It is this understanding, above all, that stands as a testament to God's unconditional love; that even when we fail to love him with our lives, he chooses to continue loving us in his. Time had stopped for me, offering nothing more than a hazy future that seemed so out of reach; but I look back now, and see that God was there. He could be found in the voices of family, friends, pastors, and even strangers. I couldn't have seen God's unchanging nature at the time, but I suppose that's because I was too immersed in darkness to recognize that there was a stable Presence in my life, a person who never stopped caring.

Those shadows mean more to me now. I can see a little more clearly, even if it is only by looking backward. Sometimes you don't understand how dark a place really was until you step beyond it. It's been a long time since I've been in that place, but I have to say I believe the verse in James is truer now for me than when I first believed.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
Post a Comment
Read more

Comparison

Psychologists and others have studied ways in which we compare ourselves to each other. One man named Leon Festinger argued that we tend to compare ourselves to other people when we don’t know how good or bad we are at something (like football or playing the guitar). One way we do this is when we compare ourselves to those who are not as good as we are, to protect our self-esteem (called “downward social comparison;” example: we’re playing basketball and miss most of our shots, but we feel okay because a teammate wasn’t even given the ball). Another comparison we make is when we compare ourselves to others who are doing much better than we are (called “upward social comparison”). When we see others who appear to be doing better than we are, we can respond by trying to improve ourselves, or by trying to protect ourselves by telling ourselves it’s not that important. There was a study published in 1953 by Solomon Asch, who asked students to take part in a “vision test.” The par...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning and Change

In a recent article in National Geographic ( "Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science "), Joel Achenbach attempted to explain why humans have trouble believing the evidence laid out in scientific research. In the article, he cited a phenomenon called confirmation bias , our tendency to adopt the evidence that fits what we already believe. Now, I am a feeling person by nature. Subconsciously, I make choices in my environment based on my emotional reaction to it. Similarly, I have found that the information I remember most is the information I respond to with strong emotion, whether that emotion is humor, anger, shock, or something else. This is why I believe confirmation bias exists: we respond to facts emotionally. However, sometimes we learn information that, instead of confirming what we believe, has the opposite effect. We are introduced to facts that shock us out of our complacency. That shock can jar us into questioning long-held beliefs, and even entire worldviews...
Post a Comment
Read more