When Doves Cry

"I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness." -Jesus

There is something haunting about the mist rising with the sun over the Kansas prairie and the sound of a mournful dove cooing in the distance. The heavy silence is broken when the dove cries. Rising with the sun and taking flight in pursuit of the light. Yet out of the mist robed in black and statuesque, silent monuments to pain they are. Speechless, they are. It is the silence of the confused. The unfamiliarity of it all, an unknown fear which insists it be heard out of the darkness. It is our darkness, wrapped in the somber silence of pain, our mausoleum.

But the voice cries out of the mist, splintering the night.
What did it cry?

I am the light which dispels darkness.
I am the life which infuriates death.
I am the oasis in the desert.

Too many settle for a "light at the end of the tunnel." When there is one who dispels darkness and becomes our light. Jesus is the light and he dispels the darkness for those who believe in the light. Do not beckon to the voices which call from the ends of the valley, those lights at the end of the tunnel. Hearken to the voice in the valley, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil....for thou art with me." One does not have to walk that last, long mile alone.

Monuments of silence, shivering against the icy winds of winter lumber back into darkness.
Eyes that did not see, ears that did not hear,
Leave lonely footfalls in the snow.

Must this always be the way?
Out of the wilderness the voice cries, "Today she is with me in Paradise."

Today I wiped the snow away from his grave. Gazing silently across the lonely hilltop into the valley time has forgotten. The valley I hope God has not forsaken. I am of his line, he who forged steel with his right arm. I see the boy on the sidewalk confused and overwhelmed by his mausoluem of pain. Today I am not afraid, for we have seen a great light and he of whose name I bear passed through the valley of shadow in the light. May he who is of our line see the light, hearkening to the voice of the One who cries in the wilderness. The place where doves cry. Sola Gracia, WHB