Good Friday.

It is the evening before our departure. The dinner bell has rung, but something else, something much stronger than hunger bids me “stay”. So I remain sitting porchside, overlooking the valley. As the sun continues to slip out of view, leaving the sky with only embers of light, the temperature begins to drop significantly. The sweat on my brow dries with cold breezes that send chills down both arms. I sit on the edge of the old wooden bench and slowly put down my evening tea. There is thunder in the distance. Birds scatter out frantically from a grove of trees. The dogs begin barking… something is happening…

I am standing at the edge now, standing over Tegucigulpa’s lights, standing across its surrounding hills. The breezes blow harder and I wrap my fingers around the iron guard rail just below my waist, somehow attempting to brace myself for the force I feel coming. The winds pick up and roar violently past my ears.

Now. Just over there. In the light of dusk, I can see it coming from over the horizon- thick billows of gray fog crusading in from all sides. It comes with a gait like those of horses, riding powerfully, deftly into battle. Darkness is on the move, and behind its' foreboding haze, follows yet another crushing storm of the week.

The city lights that just moments ago seemed so bold and daring in the clear evening sky, are now dim and small. They are unaware of what is coming, of what is almost upon them.

Lightening strikes to my right and I quickly turn my gaze to find that I am not the only onlooker watching the attack from above. There he stands, the statue of Christ, on the tall cliff of a neighboring hill. Ever morning I have seen him, with his arms outstretched over the towns below, his stance unchanged, his gaze fixed…just as he does at this moment.

I fix my own gaze back to the now engulfed city.
And I suddenly see more than than the simple effects of hot air meeting cold. The fog has transformed into a living, moving being that embodies every story of brokenness and pain, and it is coming directly for Him. The broken families, the broken bodies, the broken dreams… the hurt, the poverty, the tears, the need, the depravity, the fear…it flies with the darkness towards His open arms, His waiting chest until finally…

He is covered.
The darkness settles and the storms begin.

...

Tonight I cannot see the Valley of Angels from the pillow of my wooden bunk bed. Tonight I cannot hear Jolene whisper “goodnight Tegucigulpa” as she climbs onto the mattress beneath me. Tonight the storm is loud and tonight my tears are silent and tonight I cannot shake the image of every sorrow of every sin, including my own, weighing heavily on His own broken body.



Oh but daughter of the King.
Must you always be so quick to forget that His stories never end in defeat,
and that joy always, always, comes in the morning...