Needful light

The dark nights are now with us for the next five months. Many of us prefer our waking hours to be in daylight rather than in drawn out dark evenings.

In the beginning God said, ‘Let there be light’ and he, seeing that it was good, separated it from the darkness. As we move through the biblical story and onto Jesus and then the teaching of his apostles, the theme of light and dark becomes a spiritual concept of great significance.

We enjoy stories about the forces of light overcoming the powers of darkness or good prevailing in the face of seemingly overwhelming evil.

So you’d think we would want to hear more about Jesus who said, ‘I am the light of the world’, but then we read in the gospel, ‘Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.’

It is this which causes us not to want to get too close to God, because we fear that the pure light of his very being will expose some parts of our lives which he may want to alter and we don’t.

Are we in an impasse then? No, darkness is simply an absence of light.

Three of Jesus’ recorded healing miracles involved encounters with blind men. Before meeting Jesus, each had lived their lives in darkness. He opened their eyes and in came light. From that point forward their whole lives were very different.

God is still in the business of coming to individual men and women, and shining his light into darkened hearts, and when he does two things happen: We perceive something of the desirable possibilities of being in relationship to the personal, pure and all-powerful God; at the same time we instinctively know that our lives will change if this engagement with God is welcomed. Are we prepared for this?

Those three blind men didn’t hesitate when Jesus came near, because their desire was to walk in the light rather than stumble around in their personal dark world. Jesus tells us, ‘I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness’ and again, ‘…Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become a person of light’ (John chapter 12 v35-36 and 46).