At the set time that I appoint
I will judge with equity.
When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants,
it is I who keep steady its pillars.
I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast…’ – Psalm 75:2-4

Sunday evening, walking home from church after the Fall Pig-Pickin’ (yes, this is Eastern North Carolina, what did you expect…?), Rebekah and I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful colors in the western sky as the remnants of the edges of the storm passed by.

It was the same system that delivered Hurricane Isaias to Pensacola, flooding to Alabama, heavy rains to the mountains and tornados to Raleigh.

It is one of the mysteries of our world that it is often only in threatening and perilous weather that the sky offers such spectacular shows of light and vapor. Such dangerous beauty.

But I should not be surprised. Many of the most profound and lovely experiences in my life have come at some cost. Climbing Mount Sinai before dawn. Standing under an isolated waterfall in the Appalachians after hiking twenty miles that day and one hundred that week. Breathing the icy air on top of Mount Washington. Holding our newborn children in our arms. Resting my hand on my mother’s head as she slipped into eternity.

Or, this truism: You will never hear a bagpiper playing Amazing Grace in the rain, on the deck, on a cold stormy night in the middle of the North Sea… unless you are out in the rain, on the deck, on a cold stormy night in the middle of the North Sea.

There is so much that is beautiful in our lives that we would never know had the road there been easy.

There is a passage from my new book that jumped out at me yesterday while editing, and last night’s sky brought it to mind:

One important idea is the understanding that it is not necessary to master, or completely understand everything about God. It is more important that we struggle than we overcome, more critical that we journey than arrive, more meaningful to engage than subdue, more beneficial to be in the conversation than to be right.

This is the life we inhabit. While there is obviously some appeal in the idea of complete understanding and ease and relaxation and luxury and fine weather and stress-free living and the end of struggle, disappointment and grief… it is still true that the sky is always more beautiful because of the storm.

Not only that, but it is our connection to the source of all life that adds the light and the color and the definition – and finally the peace – when we struggle in any kind of a storm.

“What came into being
through the Word was life,
and the life was the light for all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.” – John 1:4-5