6-16-2019

Good Morning All,

       1 John 1:5; “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."

    Have you ever experienced total and complete darkness?  I have a cave in the Black Hills when the lights were shut off another time we had a severe ice storm and a large area lost power.  The cave experience was contrived and lasted only a couple of minutes.  Now for sure, that was a long couple of minutes.  You couldn’t see anything around you.  It didn’t take long to become somewhat disoriented.  You had this eerie sensation that the world was moving and you couldn’t see it at all.  It was a strange experience to say the least but it was contrived, you knew it was coming so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

    The ice storm was different.  We didn’t know it was coming until it was here.  The morning after the storm, in the day light, you could see it would be a few days before power was restored.  There were broken power poles and downed wires everywhere you looked.  It was during that time that I really experienced darkness.  At night, when you went outside, you saw nothing, especially when it was cloudy.  I grew up in a time when almost every farm had a dawn to dusk night light.  Where I grew up, we had three different cooperative electrical associations within two miles of our house.  Even if one was without power, one of the other ones would still be going.  But this storm took out everything.  So, when you went out at night; it was completely dark.

    It was truly fascinating to look out and not see any of the lights that made it possible to have your bearings.  Once you were a few feet from the house, you had no clue where you were or what direction you were going.  I tried it a couple of times.  I walked 30 steps from the house and then tried to guess where I was.  As I turned on the flashlight, I was usually wrong.

    That is how our life is without Jesus as the light of our life.  For that is how the sinful world is; living in complete and total darkness.  The world has no real bearings or even the slightest idea where it is or where it is headed.  It will claim that east is west and north is south.  It will claim untruths to be accurate and the truth is “inconvenient.”  Into this mess Christ came to bring life and to be the light to the world.  His believers know the truth and can live according to that truth.  We can see the truth and we can see the failures of the world.  We might still fall for the darkness from time to time but God, in his mercy continues to shine his light upon us and keeps reclaiming us from the dark.  He continuously brings us into his marvelous light.

   Dearest Heavenly Father, you sent Jesus to be the light of the world.  He came to illuminate the darkness of the world.  Give us the strength to stay in the light and to live in the light of your grace and mercy.  Lead us to show this light to those in this world who still live in the darkness of sin.  Give us the courage to be that light.  Be with those who are especially living in the darkness and the coldness of this cruel world.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret