As we pick up after Halloween and consider the fact of All Souls Day, we might ask, thinking of another angle on this day of mystery, remembrance, and sorrow, this:  how do we explain darkness?  How do we explain why on the day of his wedding a groom to be was informed that his wife to be had been killed in an automobile accident the night before?  How do we explain why on December 29, 2004, a tsunami rose out of the Pacific Ocean and killed, in the sweep of a moment, over 200,000 people while we in the United States were basking in the aftermath of Christmas?  How do we explain why a young man in Illinois, aged seventeen, was walking through a forest preserve when, out of the blue, a limb fell and killed him, instantly?  How do we explain the Holocaust?  How do we explain genocide in Rwanda?  How do we explain ethnic extermination in the Balkans?  How do we explain tragedy unwarranted and unforeseen?
     Humanly speaking, we cannot.  Sure, we can say that it is the product of a fallen world sundered by sin, the inevitable result of a cosmos bent irreparably by evil, but this still doesn't tell us why some people die when they do, why God seems to allow some to live and others to die, why suffering comes to some in such immense quantities and to others not at all, why some people lose loved ones way too early and others do not.  How can we explain the randomness of evil and pain?
     We cannot.  All we can say is this:  "God is light" and, as the writer of the first epistle of John says, "in Him there is no darkness at all."  Though darkness will wrap itself around every corner of our lives, ensnaring us in hopelessness and despair, we can nonetheless remind ourselves of this, that, "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all."
     Somehow, some way, explanation exists.  Somehow, some way, purpose prevails.
     God is light.