Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Finding the light means searching in the dark

Saturday afternoon, Mary and I took some time to go through the trailer. I found shoes I haven't worn since the last trip to the beach, complete with the sand that left the beach with me.

We found things that we had completely forgotten existed, including a neat flashlight/radio that would be even neater if we could find the plug-in for it. I suspect that electricty wound empower (my word of the day) this device moreso than even gravity does the frisbee we found tucked away on a sandy floor beside the bed.

Still, the flashlight will run via hand-cranked charger if we can find some lunkhead who will crank it by hand for hours because he (or she for that matter) doesn't know where he put the charger.

We have flashlights of every kind, make and size in the trailer. We have this one great big one that when turned on is similar, I suspect, to a star going supernova. Shine this baby on the ground and ants run for helmet and kevlar armor, with tiny puffs of smoke trailing their little ant automobiles. It takes a week-long charge to turn this on for, oh, 10 minutes or so. But when it's on, the sun isn't necessary. Once we turned it on on a cloudy day in Florida and the clouds were next seen in Wisconsin.

We have another that is the equivalant of the old oil lanterns, only with batteries. It takes eight of them. Eight D batteries at about a hundred bucks each or so. The batteries last for, oh, about four minutes. We never remember to buy new ones, hence the lantern is as useless as my check book. Another lantern-looking thing needs a big ol' battery that lasts a lifetime or so. Unless you need it, then apparently a lifetime isn't all that long anymore.

There was a period of time after Hurricane Katrina when I couldn't go through a Home Depot or a Lowe's without purchasing a new flashlight, lantern, device. When my wife, Mary, began to take them away from me, these hand-turned charging devices, it gave a whole new meaning to the term "cranky."

Eventually, however, the light came on, and I began to understand how little I really, really needed a new flashlight/radio/garage door opener/can opener/dog back scratcher. No matter how much they said I did, in fact, need one.

We had more at one point before it became evident that it would never, never be dark enough in our own little corner of the world to need quite so many of these to light up our own little corner of the world. So, we began to sell them off one little light of mine at a time, obviously keeping the best. Perhaps if we had worried as much about keeping the chargers ...

In the months that followed that awakening, we began to give or sell away our little points of lights. In the interim, I've thought a lot about the treasured sayings of Jesus in conjunction with tales of light. Jesus lived in a world and culture in which childen were thought of with the same love and reverence as were cattle or sheep, in other words without care or love at all. The same could be said of the way the world in which he lived expressed themselves about women. Children and women were anything but first-class citizens. In fact, they weren't really classified as citizens at all.

It was a dark, dark world. It was a world without love, without compassion, without humility.

Into it came this man, a man about whom the world as a rule thought little,till the light forced it to. But John's good news says "The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."

Talk about a mission statement.

In order to clarify things, Jesus himself later was quoted as saying in the good news of this writer John, "I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darknes, because you will have the light that leads to life."

It was a dark, dark world. Deadly, cruel, without justice and a stranger to mercy was this world. God sent the light to this world. The light. A beam of love, a flash of mission. The light began to shine, in moments, then in minutes, stretching into years... three years.

But strangely, if you really ponder things, the world around this flash attack of love-giving light only got darker. In other words, a streak, a peck, a finger of life-giving love hit this area known as Palestine, and a few began to worship, began to bow down, began to get it.

The rest? Heck, eventually they killed the light itself. Or they thought they did.

Glorious in heaven, beyond the ability of anyone to paint or photograph or even describe, the light came to earth with a plan, a marvelous color-filled plan. Tell the world about the light, and the light would splinter onto all the world.

It still, still hasn't happened.
Darkness did all it possibly could to extinguish the light.
It threw water on it, only to discover dashing the "light" with water is the best thing one can do.
It set fire to it, only to discover that a spirited flame is essential to the light of the world in the first place.
Darkness tried to push the light aside, put it under a table, cause a storm to pop up around it, surround it with persons who knew all sorts of rules, knew the rule of law like the back of its hands but knew nothing of the rule of love, and even -- eventually -- nailed it to a tree.

Despite darkness' best shot, the light continued to shine. For a while it was a sliver of light, put away in a tomb of darkness. But the sliver broke free, climbed a hill to become a beacon, continued to be the houselight on the hill above the rocky sea, continued to be the answer to the questions darkness tried to hide behind. Eventually, the light would circle the globe, like the flame before an Olympics.

Is the world covered in light? No, not yet. Maybe never.

"I am the light of the world," The Word said. The darkness shrank, like water before the world's largest towel.

It is a dark, dark world. Jesus was (and is) a bright, bright light.

THE light of the world.

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