The Dark Scary Caverns from the Black Hills. Can I have a Light Please?
The Black Hills surrounding Rapid City, South Dakota are full of beautiful but
mysterious caverns. These are bursting with innumerable chambers, some large,
some small, and everywhere you look there are colorful varieties of crystal,
including flowstone, frost crystal, logomites, stalactites, and stalagmites.
Many of these caverns have been turned into tourist attractions, earning their
owners a lucrative income during tourist season.
When all of the lights are turned off however, these beautiful caverns become
rather lugubre. Your view is limited to pure blackness. Someone can wave his
hand in front of your face and jump up and down (Be careful if you try this! The
ceiling can be quite low sometimes! Ouch!), but though you might feel the breeze
of the movement, you will see nothing at all. You are completely surrounded by black.
For anyone who is claustrophobic, this could mean panic!
Once light is restored, your eyes gradually adapt, and you once again discover
the beauty of your surroundings.
This experience makes you realize that there is beauty no matter where you are.
Your life may seem to be in the deepest, blackest pit, but if you take the time
to look attentively around you, you will notice that beauty and grace continue
to surround you.
We were told that in the 1800s, the Black Hills caverns were used for
initiations. People were brought deep down into the caves, then the guide would
disappear with the light and they had to find their way back out in the dark. If
they succeeded in reaching the exit (that is, if they were able to avoid falling
over a precipice, if the cuts they received weren't too deep, and if they
survived the many bruises and head bangings!), they were accepted into the clan
of cave dwellers.
I think I would have passed on that one, don't you?
But one has to wonder how anyone can survive the deepest recesses of these
lugubre pits, with no source of light. How can anyone come out alive?
And what about the deep, black pits of life that circumstances often throw us
into? How can anyone come out of these alive?
The answer is simple: Faith. When you face the impossible, when you find
yourself in the deepest, darkest, most-impossible situations of life, when hope
has become a souvenir from the past and all of your efforts led you only deeper
and deeper into the grime, there is Someone who has invested in you. Someone who
died for you so that you could live. And not just in this temporal existence
either, but eternally, with Him as your friend.
His resurrection is proof that His claims are true, and that same resurrection
power is offered to you! "His divine power has given us everything we need for
life…" (2 Peter 1:3 NIV); "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may
strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being…" (Eph 3:16
NIV); "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that
you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in
Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the
heavenly realms…" (Eph 1:18-20 NIV)
When we find ourselves in the midst of the darkest circumstances without a
glimmer of hope on the horizon, we each have a choice to make. We can simmer in
hopelessness, surrounded by our darkest thoughts and blackest circumstances, or
we can reach out to the helping hand that Jesus offers us. Friends, no matter
what your impossibly dark situation is, have faith. Not in yourself, for when we
trust in our own endeavors, we limit ourselves. Instead, trust in the One who
can really get you out of there! Only when we trust solely in Jesus and in His
loving power for us will we be able to see the impossible becoming accomplished.
"I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say
to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be
impossible for you." (Matt 17:20 NIV)
Are you lost in one of those dark, slimy caverns of life? Follow Him. He knows
the way out!
Rob Chaffart