For Wilshire Baptist Church
The photograph on Facebook showed a woman sitting at a table at a seaside restaurant. She was in profile, head raised, chin on hand, looking toward the west. It was late afternoon and the sunlight was coming in soft and low, revealing an expression of pure serenity.
The picture accompanied news that this wife, mother, grandmother and friend of so many had “passed peacefully in her sleep,” far too soon, “and, as we believe, has returned to her Creator and Savior.”
I didn’t know this woman well but I could recognize her voice and wonderful laugh from down the hall and around a corner. I know of her love for life and people because it shined through the people she knew and loved the most. I know that she loved the sunlight because she and her husband went often to the edge of the world where ocean meets sky and the sunlight is brightest. I also know that she loved the Lord, the true light, because she devoted so much of her energy to sharing it with others. Especially children. It seemed that she wanted to make sure they were following the true light and not a false light or one of their own making.
Each of us is born at sunrise, facing east, yawning, not fully awake. As our day unfolds our eyes open and we begin to follow the light on a journey of discovery, adventure, success and failure, joy and sadness. Sometime in our afternoon we discover that we can’t go east again; we can’t go back to the sunrise and start over. We can look back and remember, but to stay in the true light we have to keep moving with it, and it is always leading westward toward our sunset.
If we have been taught well by one like the woman in the photograph, we will trust and follow the true light wherever it takes us through our day. And when our evening comes and the light is getting low we don’t have to be afraid. We’ll know — like she knew and taught — that the true light leads beyond the horizon to a place where there is no sunrise or sunset but light eternal. Like the woman in the photograph, we will know pure serenity.