The storms will pass

By Howard Coop

Contributing Writer

On that very special day in 2017 – 9/11 – I went to the television to get information about two significant events. I wanted to know what special events had been planned in observance of that fateful day 16 years ago, and I wanted to know about the devastating effects left by Hurricane Irma as that terrible storm had swept crossed Florida and moved northward into Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The first thing I heard after turning on the television was the end of a report given by a Fox News reporter who was reporting from Orlando. After describing in a graphic way the widespread devastation left by that terrible hurricane and the sufferings of many who were driven from their homes, he ended the report in a positive way by saying, “But today the sun is shining over Orlando.”

Those words at the end of that report were – and they were meant to be – positively uplifting, and the first thing that came to my mind that morning was the line from a Kitty Wells song, “Well, when it looked like the sun wouldn’t shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the cloud.” And there was hope. Bad as the situation was, and had been, better things were ahead. As residents of that devastated state were interviewed, one thing was obvious: They were down but not out. They were determined to rise above the devastation.

Regardless of how devastating they are, the storms will pass, the gray skies will become blue, and the sun, bright and beautiful, will shine again. Troubles, sometimes a lot of them, will come, and they will hurt. But they will pass, and things will get better. When I was a small boy, I was reminded over and over again by those wise with age an old adage with a double meaning, “It gets the darkest just before the dawn,” and it does. That’s just the way life is. We can rely upon that.