This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (I John 1:5 ESV)
Light
It was a dark and stormy night, and the power had gone out. It was dark, and I am sometimes scared of the dark. Down in the basement, checking the circuit breaker box, my flashlight also went dead. It was doubly dark, and I was doubly scared. Flipping circuits did not help, so I shuffled and stumbled upstairs and huddled in a dark corner of the dark house and pretended to be brave, for my children’s sake.
And then gloriously, the power returned! I could have danced if I knew how to dance… but instead I mostly grinned.
But I am so scared of the dark, that I sometimes do not trust the light. What if the power had only returned temporarily? What if the dark was about to return? What if the light did not last?
I wonder if this unreliability of our light is what John had in mind here. Good news is often followed by bad news. Fixed things breakdown again. Victories easily slide back into defeat. Troubles vanquished are imitate the Phoenix and rise to trouble us again.
But God is true light.
And darkness can not hold a candle to Him.
The rest of the world has good reason to worry about darkness… but we have the light.
We are peculiar, God’s light is permanent in our lives.