News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
October 29, 2001 ___ A Halloween reflection: Wiggly shadows in dark corners ___By Glen Schmucker ___The old man’s eyes filled with tears as he told me about his childhood encounter with a tornado. As the storm had started toward his family’s farmhouse, his father grabbed the children and ran to the cellar. But as the light from the gas lantern was lowered into the blackness, it penetrated the cellar’s dark corners only to cast dozens of wiggly shadows against the dirt walls. No safety there; it was infested with copperheads. With one child in each arm, the father vacated the cellar in just two steps. The only place left to go was back to the house, lying directly in the pathway of the tornado. ___As the old man told me his story of narrow survival, he was so overcome with emotion he had to stop talking. He never explained the tears, and I never asked. I was left to wonder: How could an experience be so frightening that it reached through seven decades and brought tears of childhood fear to an old man’s eyes? ___Or were they tears of fear? Could they have been tears of remembering a father who, faced with a tornado on one hand and a storm cellar full of copperheads on the other, refused to see himself as nothing more than the victim of circumstances beyond his control? A father who kept bringing his power to bear until his children were brought to safety? ___Sometimes we cry for reasons we don’t understand. Our childhood fears can still haunt fully grown adults. Halloween-like wiggly shadows in dark corners, their venom still reaches through decades to poison and choke us in places we’d hoped to find safety. Some even see shadows in the cellars where their earthly fathers, or mothers, took them, not for safety, but for harm. ___Eventually, if we’d have strength for new storms, we’ll have to do some spooky work in our souls’ dark cellars. We’ll have to go there and see the shadows for what they are when the Light is cast against them. The Light that first casts the shadows also is the only thing that can ultimately cast out the venomous vipers that still poison and choke us in places we’d hoped to find safety. ___Job said it best, from his own cellar of unresolved misery, "The lowly he sets on high, and those who mourn are lifted to safety (Job 5:11)." He was talking about his heavenly Father—the one who keeps bringing his power, and Light, to bear until he brings us to safety. ___Even safety from wiggly shadows in dark corners. ___Glen Schmucker is pastor of Cliff Temple Baptist Church in Dallas. Baptist Standard ___ News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world. ___ ___Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook |