Darkness to light

        Our family loves the mountains.  The astounding beauty all around, the coolness, the brilliant sunrises and sunsets, the quieter, calmer pace, the glorious views, the s'mores (mountains=s'mores for our family), the hiking, the fishing, the golfing, the tennis and on and on.
        One of my very favorite times is the early morning.  It's remarkable the way, every morning, the sky would be inky black and everything was utterly dark.  You couldn't see your hand in front of your face.  But then suddenly, shockingly an orange-hued glow would gently light up the sky.  It quite literally seemed to happen within a matter of a minute or two--from pitch darkness to an orange-stained horizon.  This was that moment the other morning--

        And then, just as astoundingly, the sun abruptly makes an appearance and, again, within a matter of only a couple of minutes moves from a mere sliver over in the horizon to a full-orbed ball of fire.

        I couldn't help but think of the old adage, "It's darkest just before the dawn."  Just a tired old cliche, right?
       Well, those mountain sunrises beg to differ, for they clearly bore that truth out--extraordinarily black predawns suddenly and utterly overwhelmed by dawn's glorious illumination.
        Oh if only we could remember that perspective in our daily struggles of life.  It might look dark, but the light of God's dawn is coming!
       The thing is, the sun doesn't disappear or go away. Our problem lies not in the sun's absence but in our limited perspective.  The sun's there, but we're unable to see it due to the turning of the earth.
      Just as the sun is there all along--only we couldn't momentarily see it--so The Son is there.  He is always there. And He's in the business of decimating darkness, redeeming difficulties, and harnessing the hardships of our lives and using them for our good and His glory. Whether we can see Him or not, He's there.  He's moving. He's working.  And He's lighting our darkness.
        "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:4-5)
        There's a lot of darkness in our world, and sometimes we can feel as if it's getting darker.
        But God's Word promises that "I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the Light of life." (John 8:12)
        Jesus is the unshakable, unstoppable, unconquerable Light of the world.  And if we follow Him, we will not walk in darkness.  No matter how we might feel or how circumstances might appear, the Light of the world is there--transforming, illuminating, redeeming, reviving in innumerable ways we often cannot see and do not know.
       Praise God that the sun He created always rises. Every new morning, He sends His sun to warm and illumine our world, and He's promised to give us new mercies, new grace for each new day's needs.  Because great--infinitely great--is His faithfulness  (Lam.3:22-23).
      And if you can trust His sun to rise tomorrow morning, then you can trust, you can know, that His Son will rise victorious over any darkness in your life. The Light of the world, the Light of life, is with you, for you, before you, behind you, beside you and within you. And He makes all things, all things, beautiful in His time (Ecc.3:11)...in His glorious, darkness-busting, dawn-illuminating time.
       To God--to the Light of the world--be all the glory.