A Little Bit of Sunshine

A little bit of Sunshine

The light and the darkness – they’ve become the most obvious of clichés. They are so obvious that, despite using them all the time, we have largely forgotten what they mean. But over the past week, I have been dramatically reminded of the power of light, and I thought you might need reminding as well.

You see, I currently arrive at work well before sunrise and leave well after sunset. Besides this, the building where I work has no windows, and it’s been raining all week. This resulted in my not seeing the sun at all from Sunday evening until Friday afternoon. I didn’t realize how much it had affected me until I saw it again. I felt like Superman; just being in the sunlight seemed to lend me new energy and strength. For the first time in a long time, I really appreciated its worth – and in so doing, I was better able to understand the many references to light in Scripture.

“His Life was the Light of Men”

There is a reason light and life are so closely associated, and it isn’t just that one is necessary for the other. When I drive to work during the week, I drive in pitch-black, with nothing but an asphalt road rising up in front of me, lit by my own headlights and the occasional streetlight. The landscape, if I see it at all, is a dull, formless gray. It is uninteresting and unfriendly.

But when I drive in the light – what a difference! When I drive home on Friday afternoons, I drive through a wonderland of forests, ponds, swamps, and meadows. Tall pines rise up on either side; the sunlight sparkles on the water. Everything is alive, and everything is dancing!

Light not just life-giving, but joy-filling. Darkness is joy-sucking; it draws the interest out of a landscape. You can’t see the full color of a picture when you shine anything but a full white light on it. Light allows everything to come into its own, allows its true richness to be realized.

In the same way, we will never be truly alive, truly ourselves, until we have died to ourselves and are in Christ. When we lose our lives for his sake, we find true life, true creativity, true joy, for the first time; it is as impossible without him as color is without light.

“The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.”

Truth! The road to my workplace is extremely windy, and there are almost no streetlights or signs to tell you when a turn is coming up. There are usually cars coming the other way, so you can’t use your brights that often. Driving down this road every day in the dark and rain is anything but pleasant. You’re curving around corner after corner, swerving to dodge the guy who just appeared around the corner coming the other way and hoping there are no deer in front of you. It’s not a comfortable way to drive.

I know many people who go through life like this. They have no sense of what’s around them or what’s in front of them; they go careening through life with none of the security that comes from proper perspective. I’m not immune. After ten hours inside doing nonstop work, things that aren’t actually that important begin to grow and take up my whole world. And at this point, I’ve learned it’s amazing how helpful it is to simply walk outside and see the sky. Compared to the sky, my paperwork problems seem tame; suddenly, my world reorients itself and my work problems shrink to their proper size. As the song says, “there ain’t nothin’ like a little bit of sunshine.”

Don’t hide it and don’t hide from it.

I’ve discovered that I have far more than a page to write on this subject, so the rest of this will have to be posted next week. For now, I will end with one more thought.

God doesn’t use metaphors the way we use them. We come across two things that happen to go together, and we associate them: “he’s like a brother to me;” “it’s like meeting an old friend.” But God doesn’t ever just ‘come across’ anything. He invented light, and in doing so he invented the possibility of darkness. Why? So that he could show us all these things about himself, so that as physical beings experiencing light physically, we could understand what it’s like to draw near to “the Father of lights” spiritually.

Of course, some people don’t want to step into the light. Some of them want to remain asleep, and some are hiding something. If you are not in the light, please – draw near to Him. He’s worth waking up to discover; he’s worth giving up whatever you’re hiding. We were meant to live in the light. Don’t hide it, and don’t hide from it. Until next time.

“Fingers of Sunshine Scarborough-1=” by Sheba_Also 43,000 photos is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0