Psalm 43 ~ Your light and Your truth

Psalm 43

1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people,
from the deceitful and unjust man
deliver me!
2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
why have you rejected me?
Why do I go about mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?

3 Send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

The Houston Chronicle had a great Easter article last year. It's good to read it again:

Anne Rice's Easter Story

Anne Rice, author of dark novels such as Interview With The Vampire, has a message for her readers:

I can't go back to the vampires. I can't bring them into this world where I now live, where the...light of Christ shines...I'm somebody different now...and I won't be going back.

Anne Rice, aka Howard Allen O'Brien (& several other author names), grew up in the garden district of New Orleans. She came of years amid the gnarled oaks dripping with Spanish moss that stood guard over crumbling mansions like the one in which she lived. Decay mingled with beauty; darkness subdued light.

As a child, Anne remembers visiting Lafayette Cemetery with its signature above-ground tombs where she traced her fingertips across the tombstones of those who died of yellow fever. In her impressionable mind, stories formed...dark stories.

Her fanciful trip into darkness paralleled her own life. Anne's mother died when she was 15 and shortly thereafter she abandoned her Catholic faith. While at Texas Women's University, she wandered through the writings of existentialists and philosophers like Kirkegaard, Satre, Camus and others.

A spiritual eclipse was complete when her daughter, aged 4, died of leukemia. Writing and alcohol - the spirits for the dispirited - became Rice's coping mechanisms. In this deep malaise, Interview With The Vampire was born. In this and other books, Anne wrestled with the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the pervasiveness of evil. Looking back, Anne saw that she was expressing the "...feelings of despair of a person who does not have faith in God."

Her writings were noticed and her fame secured with combined sales of nearly 100 million books. Yet, Rice remained preoccupied with darkness. In 1998, she walked through death's shadows when she fell into a diabetic coma. Once she recovered, a ruptured appendix drew her back to death's door.

Granted two reprieves on life, Anne felt that someone was watching over her. She picked up the Bible and began to read the story of Jesus. From that point, Rice applied her formidable research and writing skills to the task of penning the greatest story ever told. In the Christ The Lord series, her first book was called Out Of Egypt. It may well have been called Out of Darkness.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, a handful of women came to visit Christ's tomb. An angel asked these women, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5). Had they searched on Friday, they would have found Jesus in the graveyard...but not on Sunday. For Jesus arose triumphant over the grave.

Anne Rice made her pilgrimage from darkness into the light. And, she's determined to never go back.

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