Even in the Dark

At some point in my elementary school days, my parents carpeted the basement and it became a depository of toys. Like most kids, the toys were fun, but some of the best times to be had just required an imagination. There were a couple window wells, but really, the basement was fairly dark. We discovered that playing Hide-N-Seek in the dark was better than regular Hide-N-Seek. If the cousins were visiting, this was a great pass time.

But at other times, I found darkness to be scary. One set of cousins lived in front of a cemetery. It wasn't particularly scary during the day, but it was creepy at night. It was rare for anyone to be able to entice me out of the house for a real life game of Ghost in the Graveyard.

Part of it, perhaps, was that at home I knew right where the light switch was. There were no light switches in the cemetery and flashlights didn't provide enough light. Things in the dark can look very different from things in the day. Just ask any three year old who sees a shadow move in their room. They are not scared of the shadow during the day, but . . . .

Even as adults, we have periods of darkness. Often times these are emotional or situational. I know a good many people in Illinois right now feel the darkness in threatened job loss and state budget cuts and any number of things. For me at the moment it is relational. I feel like I cannot move without bumping into something and knocking something over.

And at times, it is hard to remember that there is light. At times, it is hard not to let fear over take us.

Here is the truth. God is light. The pslamist writes in Psalm 27:1:

The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life -- of whom shall I be afraid?

When I was a child, I was disappointed to discover that the moon was just a giant rock that didn't even have it's own light. It seemed so large in the dark sky that there had to be more to it than that. It dawned on me tonight that there really might be more to it than that. The moon reflects the sun's light. Perhaps God placed it there in it's reflective capacity to remind us that even in the dark of night the sun is still shining.


I am never without a light switch. I need only to go to God in prayer.

God's Work In Progress,

I'd love for you to visit my personal blog: