As I write this, I’m sitting in the dark without power. When I’m plunged into darkness, my first reaction is to go and get light so I can see. The interesting thing about light is not just that it lets us see more clearly but it also dispels the darkness around us. When the power first goes out, I go grab a lantern or flashlight but not to look at. I don’t set it down on the counter and walk away. I put it close to me so I can see from its light. The closer it is, the more I can see to do what I need to. The farther away I am from the light, the more I get swallowed up by the darkness.
John 8:12 says, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’”
I could write a book on what this verse means to me but what spoke to me this time as I read it, was the idea of drawing close to Christ to dispel the dark. The darkness of anxiety, the darkness of pain, the darkness of sadness is pushed away and the closer I draw to him, the further away that darkness is. “He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness.”
We live in a time with a lot of darkness. Shadows envelope us and make it hard to see where we need to go. They make it hard to see what we need to do. But we shouldn’t look around at the shadows and expect them to go away. We need to draw close to Christ, our light, so we can see clearly. Christ’s light will give us clarity and the closer we get, the more the darkness is pushed away.
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