Are We Walking in the Light?

By my reckoning I have been in total darkness only once in my lifetime — coal-black, impenetrable darkness!

Kathleen and I and our three young children were returning from a camping vacation in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri to our home in Central Illinois. As we sped toward the Mississippi River, signs began to announce that we were approaching the famous Meramec Caverns that draw many thousands of visitors each year.

“Why not have one more thrill before we get home,” we suggested to the children. There were cheers all around. We were soon parked and quickly entered the anteroom of a large cave. Our group of tourists was ready for the march inward.

We followed a string of lights high above our heads deeper into the cave. It was an unfamiliar, weird, and wonderful world of several giant “rooms.” The path sloped slightly downward and as we moved along, our guide pointed out the wonders of stalactites and stalagmites (and more) before us.

At the deepest point in the tour we were taken into the final room carved out of the earthen depths, with twenty chairs arranged in two rows. Our guide told us that he would turn off the light for a few seconds, preparing us to feel utterly isolated and almost disoriented by the absolute lack of light.

Kay and I sat shoulder to shoulder. When the one ceiling light was switched off I could still feel her shoulder against mine. But turning toward her I could not see the outline of her head or any features of her face. The darkness was abject. I felt surrounded by a curtain of thick inky blackness.

Most people would think they’ve experienced total darkness, but a few “photons” here and there are almost always available. Even closed eyelids are rarely able to screen out every vestige of light. And of course, in the modern world, anywhere inhabited by humans will have a bit of illumination from the lights on porches, shining from windows, or the headlamps of cars.

Experiences of extreme darkness are much better known in the world of the Bible, before the availability of artificial light. And, notably, the Scriptures begin with knowledge of a primordial utter darkness that had to be dispelled as the first step toward Creation:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:2-3).

Later, the Bible treats darkness also as a symbol, using the absence of light to represent evil or mystery or wickedness. It is opposite to the goodness of light.

Old Testament Job, in spite of his perplexity at his profound suffering, says: “Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face” (Job 23:17).

Jeremiah warns the stubborn people of Israel that they must repent of their unfaithfulness to avoid being visited by darkness: “Give glory to the Lord your God before he brings the darkness …” (Jeremiah 13:16a).

The Apostle Paul uses darkness as an analogy for a willful lack of knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 4:3-6).

And perhaps most famously, the Apostle John in the New Testament makes great use of this analogy to teach and caution the young church. He writes:

This is the message we have heard from him and declared to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:5-7).

When we have inner darkness our every step is cast in gloom. The darkness diminishes our hope. The darkness of which the Apostle John speaks is often of our own doing and our shame. But it does not need to be so. The Gospel light is available to all.

The Apostle Paul writes of the Lord Jesus: “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13).

Jesus is still the light of the world offered to all who will believe.

Photo credit: Shan Sheehan (via flickr.com)