Good morning…
“It’s late August,” Barbara Brown Taylor begins her first chapter in Learning to Walk in the Dark. “I am lying in my yard on a blow-up mattress waiting for Friday to become Friday night, which is how I know people are wrong when they say, ‘It’s as clear as the difference between night and day.’ That might be true at noon or midnight, but here in the liquid edge between day and night, the difference is so unclear that there are many words for it: sundown, twilight, nightfall, dusk.”
A new realization begins dawning on me. A liquid edge exists inside us too. Between sadness and joy, weakness and strength, grief and growth, we move through a hazy state of dusk. Mixed results from important scans. Dealing with the slow work of healing. Emptiness will gradually refill. Love is expressed in unlovely places. This wounding world shows our need for God. Much of life is as unclear as the sundowning difference between night and day.
A wise statement I recently met sheds light on our daily experience of nightfall. “We admire people for their achievements, but we connect with them in their broken places.” At twilight in this messy world, our liquid edge instinctively flows toward bonding power in broken places.
I brought out my baggage at dusk, carrying it on my shoulder in their sight (Ezekiel 12:7b, ESV).
…Sue…
