“I’m not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn’t it a splendid thing that there are mornings?”
p. 39
An oversimplification by a young girl, yet a grain of what should be haunts these lines. No doubt, it is a splendid thing that there are mornings. They remind us of resurrection. Nothing simple about resurrection or mornings. A faint lightening on the horizon—imperceptible. The first twitter of bird song. All because a large sphere continues to rotate—day after day, year after year, century after century—never altering its speed. Hardly simple.
But despair cannot be so easily banished, can it? Miracles like mornings don’t always change our circumstances. And yet the few minutes that change deep night to hopeful dawn is clearly different than the few minutes that change noon to 1:00 PM. Why? Because we are more aware of the miracle, more conscious of the change. What we see at noon, we see at 1:00. And so often what we feel at noon, we feel at 1:00.
But Anne is right—even if only for a brief moment. From the blindness of night to the slow emerging of color, we are aware, however vaguely, of his mercies. And there is hope when we believe in mercy.
But the splendid thing that is morning—even that is not a panacea. For Anne, it brings imaginings of what might be. But day also brings reality. “It [her imaginings that she was wanted] was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.” Yet I believe, for Anne, the joy that morning brings, the imagining that morning brings, is worth the hurt that comes. For a world without hope is no world to live in.
So let us let the mornings do their work—not just in imaginings, but in the reality that someone is consistently reminding us through mornings—that death and despair do not have the final say.
Lingering Over Leaves 