Let There Be Light
By Dan Woods
Dan is an active member of the Tylersville Road Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Mason, OH. He is employed at Procter and Gamble. Dan is married to EcuMiniNet Online Contributing Writer Rebecca Bowman Woods and has four children, a dog, two rabbits and many fish in West Chester, OH.

Why would anyone in their right mind intentionally go into an unfamiliar, dark, slimy damp ‘wild’ cave? Here’s one good reason, God is there, too.

Let me be clear here on what a ‘wild’ cave is, and what it is not. It is not a tourist trap, full of non-slip passages, handrails, and artificial lights. There is no cafeteria in the middle, no souvenir stand at the end of the line. And there is no professional to guide your safe passage.

A wild cave is none of that. It typically has lots of other things, though. Mud and rocks, really cold water, and a whole lot of dark. ‘Dark’, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is “1. With very little or no light. 2. Reflecting only a small fraction of the incident light. 3. Lacking light or brightness”. I get the point.

But this official definition cannot convey the total absence of light that you experience in the depths of a cave when you pause and turn off all artificial light sources you’ve brought along. At first you experience the afterglow of the extinguished light source (like a TV screen just turned off in a dark room). But this goes away and you are left with nothing, visually. You think that your eyes will adjust and soon you’ll be able to see something…the shapes of the walls or a hand waving two inches from your face. But that’s not the case in the depths of a wild cave. You see nothing. Nothing. That is, until you start to creep yourself out a little and click that flashlight back on.

A wild cave is a place that few people go, for a variety of reasons. Claustrophobia is the first hurdle you have to face. First, you need the opportunity. Then you need a map. You must accept that you will get tired, hot, cold, sweaty and filthy. All in all, most folks would probably rather take a hike in the woods, or go to the shopping mall, or read a good book. But those who do cross the word “spelunking” off their mental “To Do” list won’t get to experience yet another one of God’s marvels in this world. A taste of the subterranean; blind fish, white salamanders, see-through cave crickets, and furry little bats on their turf, not hanging from a plastic tree branch at the local zoo. There is the thrill of seeing stalagmites and stalactites that don’t have a blue 60-watt bulb trained on them. You see more of the wonders of what God has created in these things.

One of my favorite “visions of God” came in a wild cave. A group of friends and I were exploring a cave that was new to us. It had two ways in and out. We had a map of this cave, but none of us had ever been in it before. It was a cold, sunny winter day with about 8 inches of snow on the ground. We abandoned our coats at the mouth of the cave. Waiting for us was the constant 50-something degree temperature that most caves are in the Mid-Eastern U.S. After trying to follow the map for a couple of hours, we began to suspect we’d taken a wrong turn. A mild degree of panic entered our minds as we tried following a couple of useless passages from a central room.

A main stream ran the length of the cave, but there were many little streams that joined up and departed this larger one and we weren’t convinced we’d kept to the central stream. We decided to gather our thoughts and really study the grimy map we were clinging to. We remained perplexed. All of us turned off our flashlights and we lit a few candles *. Someone noticed that the flames seemed to be flickering in one direction; we reasoned that the air currents must be pointing the way out (or back).

We shouldered our supplies and started off in that direction. I took a turn as the leader. After sloshing through the water of the stream for a while, I suddenly realized there was a very faint glow up ahead. I stopped and hushed the group and focused their attention to where I was looking. Was I hallucinating? No, they saw it, too. We pushed on. The glow increased. The volume of trickling water was rising. The air began feeling thicker and cooler. I rounded a corner and was treated to one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen. There was the exit of the cave 100 feet ahead; a 50-foot high opening. But I couldn’t see trees.

The cave opening was draped with gigantic icicles, some were over 30 feet long and 8 inches thick! It was gorgeous…the sunlight filtering through, flashing prisms of color all around, a mist in the air where the warm cave air was mixing with the sub-freezing “outer-world” air. And it was the way out, tremendous, and beautiful. It was the epitome of experiencing “the light at the end of the tunnel” by the hand of God, not man. There was nothing artificial here.

The gamut of emotions I felt were probably what the disciples must have gone through during the period of their lives we now call Lent and Easter. There is a sense of assurance following the path, then struggling, unsure of where to go or what to do. All to find that the purpose of the journey is really the surprise, the vision-of-God, and the “light” at the end of the tunnel of a very dark experience.

* Cave explorer etiquette note: NEVER leave candles or wax behind in a cave. In fact, adopt the well-known spelunker’s credo –“Leave nothing behind but footprints”

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