Through the Cracks

Why do children—whether playing or merely walking down a sidewalk—warn one another to “watch out!” or “avoid the cracks or you’ll break your mother’s back”? What was there about cracks that children wanted to avoid? Today, on the other hand, one can hear or read messages significantly different! One author writes, “God lurks in the cracks between certainties,” and another, “There is a crack in everything but that’s where the light can get through.”

Of course, we don’t like the uncertainties nor the cracks until experience proves to us that GOD and LIGHT can be the surprise in these-in-between places called “uncertainties” and “imperfections.” The Israelites might have been the first to admit and remember gratefully that God came through for them, time and again, when they feared defeat, punishment or abandonment. In the nick of time we say, “God saved them,” or “surprised them,” or “sent a Son to walk, talk, grow and love them (and us) into an entirely new way of living.” God is so often a surprise. God comes to us in the stranger, a Muslim, a dancer, a non-believer, in the Christian at my side, or even in the one I do not know or understand. In my uncertainties, doubts, cracks. I believe God lurks wherever just to shine a light—just in the nick of time! I don’t want to miss the presence of God, so I pray for a change of focus! Will you also do that?

Renée Domeier, OSB

Photo by John Foster Rossi on Pexels