There is Always Light
John 1:1-5 says:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
Last spring, as we all know so well, many of the normalcies of life were very disrupted. One of the many oddities was the lack of sports. March Madness was cancelled, Major League Baseball didn’t start on time, and the Summer Olympic Games were postponed. So in April when ESPN started airing the documentary The Last Dance about Michael Jordan and the 1990’s Chicago Bulls, it gave sports fans something to watch and talk about. I really enjoyed the documentary and reliving some of those great moments.
Learning more about who Michael Jordan is and what made him so successful was fascinating. One of the most compelling parts of Jordan’s story was just how close he was with his dad. His dad was his best friend and his greatest mentor. It was shocking to learn about this closeness only to later watch the documentary explore how James Jordan was tragically murdered and examine how devastating this loss was for Michael. Jordan shared that one thing his dad taught him was that you have to take a negative and turn it into a positive. Now that’s a very simple idea, but profoundly affected Jordan’s life as he tried to live by it after suffering such a terrible tragedy and great loss.
The world is having to deal with a lot of negatives right now. We are all being forced to walk through some dark places and there’s no magic to make it all go away. We certainly need to make room for grief and lament, but we also need to make room for the fact that God meets us in the midst of these difficulties. God is with us all here and now. And God has equipped us with the ability to turn a lot of negatives into positives— to shine light in a lot of dark places. And I wonder what that looks like for you. I wonder how you might shine light in other peoples lives who are in need right now. I wonder how you might seek out light and love and joy despite the challenges. And I also wonder what that’s going to continue to look like for our local churches and the universal church. How are we going to create positives for people who may be struggling? God is with us in the darkness creating opportunities for us to share the light in ways we’d not thought of before. With God’s help, we can be light. We can get creative and innovative and think outside the box. John Wesley taught 3 simple rules to live by: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. It's always helpful to start by reflecting on what it means to do no harm and then moving into how do we do good. In this moment in time, these are especially important instructions to consider.
God is with us. God’s light dwells within all of us and within all of us lies the means to turn negatives into positives. So we can choose to bury our heads or we can choose to be shaped by the challenges. Barbara Brown Taylor, author of a Learning to Walk in the Dark, writes about how we can find a deeper spirituality in
the seasons when we don’t have all the answers. If we can put aside our fears and anxieties, we can explore what God has to teach us in the dark. We can find courage. We can understand the world in new ways and we can feel God’s presence guiding us through the seen and unseen. Taylor explains that it is often in the dark that we grow the most. She writes,
“It’s not a popular truth, but there it is: God dwells in deep darkness. The darkness that is not dark to God can be terrifying for those who like our deities well lit. When we cannot see—when we are not sure where we are going and all our old landmarks have vanished inside the cloud—then plenty of us can believe we are lost when the exact opposite may be true. Based on the witness of those who have gone before, the dark cloud is where God takes people apart so they can be made new. It is the cloud of unknowing where nothing you thought you knew about God can prepare you to meet the God who is. It is the dark womb where life begins again, at least for those who are willing to lift the veil. Is this good news or bad news? I think that’s up to you.”
Friends, so much of this is up to us. Yes, we are walking in the dark in a lot of ways and there are so many things out of our control, but there are also many opportunities to turn some negatives into positives. Perhaps if we walk in the dark together we will be changed by this journey in ways that will help us shine light. Perhaps we will be shaped by this season in ways that will empower us in the future. Perhaps we will gain a deeper appreciation for the nature of life together and a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. Amanda Gorman really said it best: “For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only were brave enough to be it.” Amen.