By Pastor Don Schatz

Light in the Darkness

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
John 1:5. New Revised Standard Version

Are you afraid of the dark?  Are you afraid of the darkness?  These are two separate questions, spiritually at least.  The first asks us about an emotion caused by the dark.  The second asks about our relationship (emotionally, but also spiritually) to “the darkness”–that which, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, can push against us, and conversely, be found within us.

John 1:5 speaks about Jesus.  Jesus said of himself, “I am the Light of the World.”  The Light that is Jesus shines not only in the dark, but in the darkness.  And the darkness cannot overcome the Light that is Jesus.  Jesus, in the Light of his love for us, and in the blessing of his breath of peace and power in the Holy Spirit, pushes back the boundaries of the darkness.  He pushes them away from us.  Note, we do not say, “pushed” back the boundaries.  He didn’t do it just once and leave us to try and imitate it.  The darkness didn’t, and cannot, overcome the Light that is Jesus in our lives.  What Jesus accomplished for us in the past has an eternal effect.

We need reminders of that on occasion.  Hence a devotional word like this one.  If you are feeling like “the darkness” is closing in, Jesus shines in the darkness.  He embraces us where we are.  In the movie, Stardust, a star falls to earth and becomes a human being.  At the climax of the movie, this protagonist asks, “What do stars do?  Shine!”  And she bursts forth in love-caused light, destroying the evil antagonist.  Decades later, she returns to the heavens as a star.

Jesus is all of that and more.  He never “goes back” to heaven and leaves us alone.  “I am with you always, to the end of the age,” he says in the last verse of the Gospel of Matthew.  He is with us, continually pushing back the boundaries of darkness.  Shining brightly in us, upon us, for us.

Copyright Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado