Crows Calling

Reader. It has been. A long. Time. More than two months, in fact, and for that I apologize. In August, I started a job as a middle school grammar teacher, and man! I have never, ever been so busy. It is an indescribably wonderful yet terribly overwhelming job, which I am sure you will hear about more and more as the school year progresses. But what I want to talk about now regards something else entirely.

When I was in college, I went through a period of what I would call depression. I never went to a doctor or was diagnosed or anything like that, but I was full-on depressed. At the time, I didn't want to think about it in those terms, so I just told close friends that I was struggling with despair. But that was just another name for depression. I struggled with sin and hated myself for it. I really and truly despised myself, and I thought that if anyone knew who I really was and what I struggled with, and how often I simply chased after sin and idols, they would despise me too.

The grace of God rescued me from that pit. God pursued my heart and showed me His genuine forgiveness and whole-hearted love for me, and I was changed. Slowly but surely and miraculously, I was changed. I came to actually believe God when He said I was forgiven. Wow. Praise God.

However, one image from that time in my life has stuck with me. 

Every morning of college when I walked to the cafeteria - self-hatred and despair weighing on my shoulders far more heavily than my overloaded, black backpack - there would always be a few crows perched on the sidewalk railing or on top of a building, their caws ominous in the quiet morning.

Caw. Caw. Caw.

I hated those crows. Hated them because, in the midst of otherwise peaceful and beautiful mornings, they seemed to represent the darkness, ugliness, and despair in my heart. And perhaps that sounds melodramatic and very Edgar-Allen-Poe-ish. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I got the idea from "The Raven." Just like the black bird in the poem, the crows seemed like messengers of ill-news, reminders of my sorrows. 

Since then, I have hated crows with a passion; in my mind they still represent despair and depression. Until a year ago on a camping trip.

Each year at the end of the summer, my family and several families from my church go camping on the same weekend, and I go crazy with anticipation for it every single year. This camping trip is like my refuge, and the campgrounds are like my sanctuary. Last year was no different.

One morning on last year's trip, my dad and I sat silently at our campsite, enjoying the peace of the mountains as we waited for everyone else to wake up, the air still cool before the sun rose high over the trees. The smell of burning wood and cooking breakfasts wafted on the air from other campsites, and the sky that I could see between the canopy of trees still looked pale with the rising sun. 

Then my dad asked, "Can you hear the crows?"

I listened. 

Yes, there were the caws, reminding me of my despair and sin, even here in this sacred place.

Before I could think too bitterly about them, however, my dad went on: "There are always crows calling at dawn, heralding in the new day. Have you ever noticed that? Always in the morning. It's like wherever the dawn is, that's where they are." 

Woh. What?

Black, ugly, wretched crows heralding in each new day? If they herald in the new day, doesn't that make them, black as they are, messengers of light? I had always thought of them as heralds of darkness, but all of a sudden, that wasn't the case.

Somehow, as I sat there in the mountains, it all made sense. Yet, I struggle to articulate it well, so be patient with me.

 A messenger of light must walk through the darkness. The people who are already in the light don't need hope, so the bringer of hope must walk to dark, desperate places in order to find those that are despairing. The herald of the dawn must belong with the night.

I'll put it this way: When the woman at the well ran to tell her neighbors about Jesus, her reputation as a sinful, broken woman preceded her. They knew she was a sinner, and they believed her story about Jesus because she was a sinner. The truth of her filthiness convinced them that, if Jesus can save her, He can save anyone. (Check out John 4 if you don't know the story.)

Such is the ugliness of crows.

They seem to belong with the night, yet they are heralds of the the dawn. They seem to belong with darkness, despair, and sin, yet they speak of the hope that, though the darkness hide me, light is coming.

Let's be honest: Though hope is a beautiful thing, when we most need it is when it seems the most ugly. It speaks the truth of present circumstances, bleak as they are, but it also points to something better.

Emily Dickinson wrote this about hope:

                       "Hope" is the thing with feathers - 

                       That perches in the soul - 

                       And sings the tune without the words -

                       And never stops - at all. ("'Hope' is the thing with feathers - (314)")

She is right in one sense but wrong in anther. Hope is a feathered thing, but it is not one that sings all the time like a cheerful canary or something silly like that. Hope is a crow, not flinching from the present darkness, bleak as it is, but pointing to something better - to light and life and joy.

Crows seem to belong with the darkness, with those long, wearying seasons of discouragement, struggle, and defeat. Crows seem to belong with those times in which I think the light will never come. It is in those times that I need a crow kind of hope because I need someone who recognizes the depths of my darkness and night but also ceaselessly calls:

Dawn. 

Dawn. 

Dawn.