The Light of All
“IN HIM WAS LIFE, AND THAT LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF ALL MANKIND. THE LIGHT SHINES IN THE DARKNESS, AND THE DARKNESS HAS NOT OVERCOME IT” (JOHN 1:4-5)
Since Rosalie and I began dating, each year we have trekked over to Queenstown to take in the Luma Southern Light Project. Reports are that 50,000 other people attended this past Queens Birthday Weekend. It certainly felt that way on Sunday night. A number of children are quite scared of the dark. I remember as a boy attending Boys Brigade camps and we often arrive at our destination close to dark, our first task was to pitch our tents. After this, torches in hand we would go exploring. It was not until the next morning that we really discovered the nature of the place that we were camping in. In the dark things often look different, bigger and more foreboding, in the darkness there were pockets of mystery. We thought Theo may have been a little uncomfortable in the dark, but he took it all in his stride, often overcome with joy at the sight of the lighting effects.
But for all the fear of monsters, or things that might sneak up on us in the dark, when I think about it, darkness is not immensely powerful. No matter how deep the darkness, it is never able to extinguish a light. There is never a struggle, when lights turn on, where the darkness fights to keep its hold on us. Even a single flickering flame does not falter because of the darkness around it.
In fact, the only power darkness has is in the space granted it by an absence of light. When the light comes, the darkness retreats. We can see things as they actually are. When the light comes, the darkness is defeated.
At winter it can be a dark time for many. The days are short, people leave for work in the dark, and return in the dark. When we add in the gloom created by our inversion layer fogs. Life in Central can feel quite foreboding. But the difficulty of winter can become part of our tapestry of hope.
The story of God is that Christ comes to meet us, not ‘in the form of God’, but as one of us; he comes, not as a king in a palace, but as a baby in a manger. Poor, fragile, human. Human life now woven into God’s life.
Christ comes as light that shines amidst the darkness. A beacon of hope for our salvation. A light to lighten the darkness in which we live. The special thing about hope is that it points beyond the ‘now’. Hope does not claim that everything is fine now, that we have nothing to worry about. Hope points us to the future, a better future than the present we experience. Something which is coming to change our present pain. And yet hope changes our relationship with the struggles we are facing - present tense - completely. A person with hope can endure almost infinitely more than a person without it. Something is changed when we discover that we have hope, something in us is transformed.
Darkness has no power to extinguish even the faintest of lights, but we can fan a single flame into a roaring fire. The light from a lighthouse is usually not that powerful or bright, but the light work powerfully in the darkness to warn and to protect. We can spread this light by embracing it, by becoming lights ourselves: the lights of the world.
Christ is the light that shines in the darkness, the true light that has come to enlighten all people. We can approach it, embrace it, set ourselves alight with it, and shine hope into the lives of anyone who is seeking it. God calls each of us to embody the hope we have in Christ, that others might find it for themselves.
Why not this depth of winter – perhaps on the shortest day of the year take some to remember the light of the world. Why not as you light a candle, or light the fire, or turn on the outside light remember the power of light over darkness. The light which came as a tiny baby at Christmas, the light which came to give us hope. The shining beacon of our salvation in whose light the darkness around us loses its grip, just a little, as we remember where we are going and who is returning to meet us, and that all these things which hurt and haunt us are being made new.
May the light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds. May the light of Christ illumine the path of hope and may the light of Christ shine through us all.
WHEN JESUS SPOKE AGAIN TO THE PEOPLE, HE SAID, “I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. WHOEVER FOLLOWS ME WILL NEVER WALK IN DARKNESS BUT WILL HAVE THE LIGHT OF LIFE.” (JOHN 8:12)
Andrew Howley
June 2021