Note: On Saturdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
And there was light.
God created light out of wasteland… and allowed dark to continue to exist.
We know the light is good. We appreciate it all the more when we find ourselves in darkness—be it mental, emotional, spiritual, physical. We have faith because we know just how warm and loving and gentle the light is. We believe that with God’s help, we can persevere through the dark. We believe the light is coming, or perhaps is already there but we cannot see it through.
They were a people not too different from us. They prayed; they had families; they worked to put food on
the table. They laughed and loved, judged and cried. They longed for the light God had promised, and a few had begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, the man who parried with the community’s religious leaders, who rarely answered a question directly, who healed, was the Messiah who would deliver them from the darkness. And then He was gone, dying on the cross, and the light of the world seemed to be snuffed out with Him.
Except—it wasn’t. The tomb was empty. The Light remained, never to be totally extinguished again for those who believed.
And so it remains, two thousand years later. We can embrace the darkness, the worry, the violence, the prejudice, the evil that exists on earth. Or we can embrace the light or the possibility of the light—and let it shine on others through us.
