The Sun Will Come Out

The stories and images are horrific. Water, water, everywhere. The Cumberland River finally crested 12 feet above flood level. Downtown Nashville businesses are flooded. The Schermerhorn Symphony Center has lost the custom built organ and two grand pianos due to flooding. LP Field is covered in water. The Grand Ole Opry has water covering its wooden pews. Subdivisions of homes are covered up to the roofs. The Opryland Hotel has six feet of water. Ten people have died in Nashville. People are being evacuated from their homes by boat. There have been over 1000 rescues in Nashville, and are continuing. It's incredible and unbelievable. But it has happened.

Today the sun was out and it was a beautiful day - until you drove past the businesses whose buildings have water up to their roof lines. Or until you watched the news or read the paper or viewed the pictures on the Internet. While it seemed an ordinary day, it wasn't. It especially wasn't if your home, or business, or life, was forever changed because of flooding.

I guess that's life. Disaster strikes and our lives are never the same. And yet, even though our world is shattered, the sun comes out and life goes on. It doesn't seem fair that everyone else's lives are moving on, while ours seems to have stopped. Whether it's a flood, or the loss of a job, or the betrayal by someone we trusted, or the death of a loved one - the event stopped us cold. But the sun kept shining, and life kept going on around us.

But maybe that's why the sun comes out, to remind us that we still have lives to live. We still have things to do and goals to achieve and one foot to put in front of the other. Maybe the sun has to come out so we can see where to go and what to do next.

Life does stop. Our breath is taken away, and we're not sure if we want to take the next one. But we take that breath and we keep going. We look to the sun and hope for the best. And somehow we find our way back to life.

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Things that make today memorable: Purchasing a new refrigerator to replace the broken one; cleaning the carport; Sonic dinner with MB and Netty; seeing the flood sights of Nashville