Shadows...

Tonight the wind blows stronger, and cooler in the backyard. Just this afternoon I was doing yard work and tending the garden in this same place. It had a different look to it then, all lit up and in vivid detail. The Bermuda fighting for control over the dollar weed, the okra, tomatoes and melons looking hopeful for a July harvest. But tonight, things are not so lit up and the vivid detail has been blacked out. The pole light (that's country talk for street light) on the corner to the north of the house shines enough to project the leaves of the tree in my side yard onto the back fence giving it a kind of dark camouflage that moves about and seems to be alive. The windsock owl decoy from Cabela's guarding the garden with wings extended and cupped, flap eerily in the breeze as it hangs suspended in mid air as if coming in for the kill, the detail of its body covered in blackness. The small sounds coming from the darker corners of the yard just to my left, during the daylight would go unnoticed but, tonight they invite my attention as I slowly turn my eyes to see what is sneaking up on me without alarming it into attack. Shadows...

So it is in the mind of a man who lives in the past, letting the shadows catch up to him and in a moment of darkness, letting them steal away his confidence. So it is in the mind of a man who just a few short hours earlier was king of all he surveyed, but now, in the darkness, he begins to question that which he knew for sure in vivid detail to be of no power. So it is in the mind of a man who allows his mind to be open to thoughts that are not of the light but of dark. But so it is in the mind of a man who remembers that what is seen is temporary, that darkness lasts but a night and joy comes in the morning, that the Abba who made the sun stand still for the battle to be won...is the same Abba who walked beside his son in the garden as Jesus prayed so strongly that the shadows creeping up on him might pass to someone else. So it is in the mind of a man who has lived to experience that he is fully known and fully loved by his Abba and that no shadows can stand in the light unless they are revealed by the sun itself.

Tonight the wind blows stronger, and cooler in the backyard and Abba is there, in the shadows...not hiding but trading life for death, not compromising but reclaiming confidence that had sold low to fear. So it is in the mind of a man who is able to believe in his heart that no matter what he sees in the darkness, Abba created the darkness too and whatever Abba creates belongs to him.

Peace,
Brian Herrian <'((><