October 23 | Moments Almanac | Rays

In the beginning there was darkness. At least that's where the Bible begins its description of creation before sunrise, before the birds sing, before the first human being took a breath. Darkness. And then God spoke. This is Moments Almanac for October 23rd. And on this day, let's remember two stories separated by thousands of years in their subject matter, but connected by one extraordinary truth. God is not absent in darkness. Sometimes that's precisely where we discover his presence. Our first story begins with a man who believed he had figured out the birthday of the universe. His name was James Usher. He was the Archbishop of Arma in Ireland, a respected scholar and a man who knew his Bible extraordinarily well. In 1650, Usher published a massive work of biblical and historical chronology. He studied genealogies, he calculated the reigns of kings, he examined ancient calendars, and after painstaking research, he arrived at a remarkably precise conclusion according to his calculations. Creation began on the evening preceding October twenty third. In the year four thousand and four BC. That's right, not approximately four thousand BC, not sometime in the autumn, October twenty third, four thousand and four BC. You have to admire that confidence. Most of us have trouble remembering what day landed last Thursday. Usher believed he had calculated the first Thursday, well actually the first Sunday, and for generations his date appeared in the margins of many King James Bibles. Now Usher was a serious scholar, and he wasn't the only one trying to calculate the age of the world. But his conclusion was a human interpretation of Scripture, not a date explicitly supplied by Genesis. And the passage that inspired all of that searching begins with one of the most beautiful images in literature. Darkness covered the deep. The earth was without form and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. I love that. Before there was anything to see, there was a God who could see. Before there was anything to understand, there was a God who understood. Before there was light, God was already there. Now let's move forward to another october twenty third, this one in nineteen eighty three, and another kind of darkness. It was early Sunday morning in Beirut, Lebanon. American Marines were serving as a part of an international peacekeeping force in a country torn by civil war. Among them was a Lutheran Navy chaplain named Danny Wheeler. He was asleep on the fourth floor of the Marine barracks, and approximately at six hundred twenty two that morning a suicide bomber drove an explosives laden truck into the building. The explosion was catastrophic. The four story building collapsed, and Danny Wheeler went down with it. One moment he was asleep in his bed, and the next he was buried beneath tons of concrete and twisted steel. He couldn't move. He could barely breathe. Around him was darkness. He called out for others, no answer, and then trapped in that terrible place, Danny began talking to God, not with the polished language of a Sunday morning prayer, but with a desperate honesty, of a man who didn't know whether he would ever see the light of day again. He struggled, questioned, he pleaded, and somewhere in all of those hours beneath the rubble, something changed. A sense of calm came over him. He later described the assurances as though God were saying, Danny, I've got you. Five hours after the explosion, rescuers finally pulled him from the wreckage. He was the last survivor rescued alive. The bombing killed two hundred and forty-one American service members. It remains one of the darkest days in the history of the United States Marine Corps. And there is another remarkable detail from those days in Beirut. Just before the bombing, three military chaplains represented three different faith traditions. They stood together at the memorial service. Rabbi Arnold Renskoff and Catholic chaplain Father George Paracelli and Lutheran chaplain Danny Wheeler. Together they recited the twenty-third Psalm. Three men, three traditions, and one ancient prayer. And then those words that would soon carry a terrible new meaning. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Within days the shadow would become horribly real. But so would the promise Thou art with me. Think about the distance between those two stories. One man centuries ago studying the beginning of the world, and the other man buried beneath the shattered building, wondering whether his own world would come to an end. One is trying to calculate when the light first appeared, and the other desperately waiting to see it again. But Genesis doesn't simply tell us that God created light. He tells us that God was present before the light came. And Psalm 23 doesn't promise that we'll never walk through dark valleys. It promises that we won't walk through them alone. And that's a distinction worth remembering because there are moments when life collapses, when everything familiar gives way. And when the world we knew yesterday no longer exists. And when we find ourselves praying prayers, we never imagine we'd have to pray. In those moments, we may not understand what God is doing. We may not understand or know how long the darkness will last. We may not even know whether the morning will come. But the promise of Scripture is not that we will always understand the darkness. It is that we can trust the one who is with us in it. James Usher tried to determine when the first morning began, and Danny Wheeler prayed that he might see another morning. And somewhere between those two stories, the Bible offers us a truth far more important than any date on the calendar. The God who said, Let there be light is the same one who says, I am with you. And sometimes, before the darkness lifts, before the answers come, before we can see a way out, that's enough. And that's Moments Almanac for October 23rd. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.