11-27-2022

 

Good Morning All,

       Isaiah 9:2; “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” 

    Have you ever experienced total darkness?  Not many of us have.  Even in the dark that we experience, there is usually some light.  Maybe you have a night light in the hall or in the bathroom or in a child’s room.  Maybe you always have a flashlight handy.  The darkest place I have ever been was a cave.  It was an old prospecting cave in the Black Hills.  It was so narrow and small in places we weren’t sure that we would fit.  After we got in about 50 feet, we turned our flashlights off.  That lasted about 20 seconds before we couldn’t take it.  It felt like the mountain was going to swallow us.  Even though nothing had changed in that 20 second period; it was hard to breathe, and you felt like you were spinning.  I was with three others, and they felt the same thing.  We had another 150 feet of cave to explore but we agreed that we had seen enough.

     The worst part was all those “things” which come out in the dark.  There are things; things that run across your shoes, things that crawl up your arm, things that hang in your face or buzz in your ear, things that we cannot see but we feel and experience them anyway.  Then there are the sounds, sounds that seem to amplify in the dark, things that sound like moans and groans or hideous laughter.  

    That is sort of how the people in the text would have felt.  When sin entered the world, man no longer “saw” God.  Adam and Eve walked with God, but sin veiled their eyes and plugged their ears.  Soon man’s relationship with God just kept deteriorating.  In our blindness, we just kept spinning out of control.  We wandered in the dark and were more lost all the time.  We walked away from God and His light and kept going further and further into the darkness, suffering the whole way.

   “But God beheld our wretched state.”  Out of His unfathomable love God sent Jesus into the world to be that “Light.”  This verse is actually part of a longer section that is a Messianic prophecy.  In this verse, God is promising to send the Light, but we live in that Light.

    Jesus came to live and die and rise again so that we could return to the Light.  God used Jesus’ sacrifice to serve as ours so now we get to have His Light, the Spirit, live within us.  The devil will try to block the light or even use the light to blind us but God, in his grace and mercy, is always there to correct the problem and keep us moving.  Sometimes we wish that the light we have would light up more of our path ahead, but we can trust God to lead us on that path that will lead us to our eternal home.  Then along the way, we are to “let our light shine” for others to see the wondrous blessing of the light and then listen to the call of the Spirit into their hearts as well.

   Father of all Light, we praise you for the gift of the Light which illumines our way.  Keep our light, our faith, burning bright in this dark, cold world that knows only pain and sadness.  Cause our light to shine brightly so that others may come to know You as the one true God.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret