Good morning… 

Our oldest daughter is the same age as the young adults killed or injured in the Texas tragedy I blogged about yesterday. That car full of college students was heading to Young Life camp in Colorado on the same weekend our college-aged daughter was serving at a Young Life camp in the mountains of north Georgia. In a few weeks, our daughter will also hop in a van full of college students she has never met to drive to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a month long mission camp hosted by another Christian leadership organization called CRU. 

This tragic car accident hits close to my heart’s home.

I have been telling you my darkest truth. As I fall deeper in love with the life flourishing around me, I fear the next experience of being reduced to a stump-like state (see My Fear Of Settling). I know I am living proof that God’s promise comes true: after life-changing loss, joy eventually returns and peace leads us forth. But the process of healing takes a long, long time and life is never, never the same. Some things are worse, some things are better, but the life we once loved is gone forever.

Having walked barefoot up from the valley of depression, I more firmly trust in God’s higher ways, ways that will never be my chosen ways. Another biblical promise grows trust in the place of my fear. In Isaiah 45:3 (AMPC) God whispers, “And I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, Who calls you by your name.”

God gives treasures in seasons of darkness. Our Creator hides riches in secret places, riches that can not be found anywhere else on earth. Why does our Sustainer tuck rich treasures in the pitch black dark? So that we may know that it is the LORD who is calling us by name, coaxing us to trust more intimately the Caretaker of everything we do not understand.

“I’ll go ahead of you,

    clearing and paving the road.

I’ll break down bronze city gates,

    smash padlocks, kick down barred entrances.

I’ll lead you to buried treasures,

    secret caches of valuables” (Isaiah 45:2, MSG).

…Sue…