Glory and Depravity

Did you know for the past 12 years the weather on this day (Sept. 27th) has been exactly the same? I did. I know because the weather 12 years ago today will forever be imprinted on my mind. It is a memory of perfect blue skies, clear sunshine and pleasant fall temperatures that accompanied the most torturous 45 minute drive I had ever made from campus to my childhood home. It was not more than an hour before that drive that I was being pulled out of my physics class at IU by a campus policeman only to be led to a phone where my dad waited on the other end with news that my mom had died. It's still amazing to me how that morning is full of the dichotomy of glory and depravity that characterizes this life on earth. How could it be that just that morning I felt the glory of God as His peace filled me in my prayer of surrender to His will for my mom; that whether He chose to heal her body by restoring it to health or freeing her from it to be in His presence I would accept it? How could I make the very same drive back home gasping for breath, straining through tears as I felt the full weight of depravity in cancer taking my mom victim at a young age? How could God's glory be shown so clearly in the beauty of the weather that day while the depravity of death touched me to the core of my being with an ache I had never experienced before? Even today as I walked in the same perfect blue skies, clear sunshine and pleasant fall temperatures I was in the midst of that dichotomy of glory and depravity, as I processed the glory of His redeeming work in my story combined with the depravity of the broken parts of it that still remain. I almost feel that the way God recreates the same perfect weather every year on this very day is what the rainbow was to Noah. It is my promise from God that in the end His glory will always outweigh the depravity.