I am the Light of the world

This isn’t at all the kind of thing I anticipated writing about here, but as someone once said, life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

A year ago February my mother passed away from a brain tumor, from diagnosis to death in 4 months. Then in October my father-in-law, the most wonderful and godly of men, died suddenly from a burst aneurysm. As hard as those were to go through, two weeks ago I experienced what is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done - sitting for two days with a close relative who was suicidal. I have never witnessed such despair. I have never seen such deep emotional pain and anguish. I have never before seen someone with absolutely no hope or expectation of anything good, nothing to look forward to but more emotional and physical pain. In short, I have never, ever, seen such darkness.

In these two weeks, however, I have seen light begin to break into the darkness in small, tentative but tangible ways, and I have come to believe that when Jesus said he was the Light of the World he meant it literally. When He is truly present in our lives there is an inner light that manifests itself as peace, hope, love, forgiveness. When those things are driven from our lives by our own actions or the actions of others, the result is a darkness that is as tangible as it is terrible.


Joh 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men;
Joh 12:46 I have come as a Light to the world, that everyone who believes into Me may not remain in the darkness.
1Jo 1:5 And this is the message which we have heard from Him, and we proclaim to you: God is light, and no darkness is in Him, none!
(Literal Translation of the Holy Bible)