It’s been dark lately, hasn’t it? In the last month or so we’ve had short days, and those short days have been gloomy. We’ve only had a couple days of full sun in this area in the past month.
There’s something about the dark that tends to make us feel a little less energetic, a little less vibrant – often a little more tired. Perhaps even a little less hopeful.
Truth is, everyone knows what it feels like to live in the dark sometimes. It’s just as much a part of our lives as it is a part of the seasons. Sometimes we live in the dark.
My family laughs at me at this time of year because I’m that girl: the one who doesn’t take down her Christmas lights – ever. And it’s not just because I don’t want to climb on the roof in the winter. Or because I’m lazy. Or too busy. I just love the lights.
They make me smile every time I see them. Every time I’m driving home in the dark.
We celebrate Christmas with lights because the people who knew Jesus and first celebrated His birth called Him the Light of the World.
They said that Jesus is literally the being behind the universe in a human body so that we could see and touch and know Him. Whew! Talk about light in the dark.
And it never gets old to me. What if it’s true?
Maybe you’re reading this now and when you hear words like Christian, church, Bible, or even a name like Jesus your brain just hears something like Charlie Brown’s teacher – “mwah wah wah meh woah wah mwah wah.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google it. It’s worth a laugh!
But what if it’s true? We’re not alone in the dark! The One who made the universe has actually pulled back the curtain and shed some light on us!
Like a lantern within it. Spreading through it. Here. Present and available. Helping us see.
Imagine that – THE ONE who IS light. With you. For you. Here… in the dark.
This is what I read in the 66 global top best sellers of all time that have been discovered, printed, and bound into one big volume we call a Bible. Bible literally just means a bunch of books. Just happens that this bunch of books, even though its first stories are as old as the original alphabets that allowed us to speak in words rather than pictures, and even though it’s got authors writing over 4,000 years of human history, these books tell a very consistent and persistent story.
There is a being behind all of this life we are living.
This being is with us in the dark. Enters into our broken world, our messy communities, our torn families, our own failures, mistakes, and dark with love. Pure, unrelenting, never giving up, with us forever, up close and personal, love.
Where are you in the dark? What if it’s true? The Light of the World knows everything about the dark, and is with us.
***
Melanie Koch Nichol is the youth centre director at Youth Unlimited YFC North Perth.
