Musing on the subject of “light” ahead of an inter-faith meeting…
A light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
The clocks went back recently; the darkness of night seems to arrive earlier. When I cycle to a meeting in a winter afternoon, I had better make sure I have lights fitted and working, because darkness makes cycling journeys more hazardous: I can’t see the potholes of Kirklees, and I cycle more cautiously in case drivers don’t see me.
My light illuminates the road ahead. A lamp for my feet, or maybe my wheels. I can see enough to travel safely. I move through darkness, but the bigger picture is hidden from me: all I can see is just enough to travel in confidence. My bicycle lights help me see and be seen, but the psalmist writes, “to God, even the darkness is not dark”. As I reflect on this, I remembered that even in the deepest darkness of night, there is nowhere God cannot find me.
Darkness may not be dark to God, but it is to us. We need the light, and when light comes the darkness is pushed back, and we are liberated to walk, or cycle without fear, moving as children of the light. God’s light shows us the way, even if only for a few steps of our physical and spiritual journey through life.
A light shines in the darkness… yet sometimes the darkness does overcome it… sometimes there is a darkness so heavy that even light is lost.
In the centre of our galaxy there is darkness so massive that all our stars rotate around it, caught in a swirling gravitational pull. It distorts the very fabric of the universe; space time is changed by its presence. There is a massive black hole which consumes everything that comes close, even light. Physicists predicted the existence of black holes long before they found them, but how do we see something that is the essence of darkness itself?
It is estimated there are two trillion galaxies within our observable universe, galaxies that are beyond our own. Galaxies so far away that light itself takes thousands, even millions of years to reach us. When a black hole comes between us and a distant galaxy, the light from that far off place is bent; imagine the way a frisbee is thrown, or a football is bent from a corner kick. Black holes are revealed by the light; we can see the darkness even though it remains – the shape of it, the magnitude of it, all is revealed by those trillions of lights shining in the depths of space.
We learn from this that light can illuminate our path, driving away darkness, but light can also show us where the darkness resides – that sort of darkness that may be hidden in the centre of our lives unseen and yet around which our paths rotate.
A light shines in the darkness… yet we still only perceive dimly, like through darkened glass. Or maybe a prism?
My Grandma use to have a glass lampshade on her windowsill, and on a bright morning the sunlight would refract miniature splashes of rainbow colours throughout the room. We humans live in a world where a narrow band of electromagnetic radiation creates the impression of light and dark, and rarely notice the light itself, only the absence of it. Yet on a day of sunshine and showers, a rainbow will lift our eyes from the ground to the sky in awe and wonder.
As a Christian, I share a wondrous awe at the majesty of the Universe, and all that is within it. I seek the creator God who brought it all into being, whose light shines in this world. My context has led me to Jesus as the embodiment of that light, but I realise that I see only dimly, like through darkened glass. What am I, mortal, that God should be mindful of me. Nothing, of nothing, of nothing… within an infinite Universe. I may flourish like a flower of the field… but a field on a planet in a Universe so infinite my mind cannot attain it. So, I am aware that my fellow creatures of the same divine Creator, seek God from their own context… and they may see the one true light refracted from another perspective. It is said that all who seek will find, all who ask will receive, and all who knock, the door will be opened to them.
So, I give thanks to God:
for the light
for the darkness
and for everything that lies between… and beyond.
Alleluia, amen.