When Darkness Falls.....

I gotta be real for a minute and say that sometimes life really sucks. There are some seriously dark and evil forces at work in the world and we see the evidence of that every single day; sometimes it's on tv, the internet, or even in our daily life. Sometimes we bring things on ourselves and sometimes other people bring it on for us. One thing is for certain though we control what we do when the lights go out and life gets dark.
I was thinking about power outages this morning while I was processing these thoughts. You know the feeling; you're chillin' at home maybe watching a little tv and boom! The blackness falls. Sometimes its you're own fault because you went all Clack Griswald on an outlet and sometimes it's some outside force like a storm a a squirrel getting fried on your power line. Either way there's always and initial panic. In my experience there's two types of people one can be in a blackout.

1. The one who freaks out and just stands there panicking and afraid to move
2. The one who goes digging in the dark for a flashlight and checks the fuse box

I think life is like that. Sometimes there's a sudden blackout and for a little while we just can't see. We can either allow the fear of the unknown paralyze us or we can go and dig out a flashlight until the lights come back on. The Bible is that flashlight when life is rough. We have to trust what it says when the paths are hidden from us because otherwise we are lost, wandering in the darkness and when the lights come back on and we see clearly, if we didn't have something to light our way we may end up on the wrong path or worse we may not move at all. That's what the darkness wants- confusion and misdirection.

But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.

- John 11:10

At the same time the darkness serves a purpose. Have you ever been in a place that's like crazy dark? I chaperoned this summer youth camp years back and we took the students to these caves in Tennessee. They were pretty rad and I remember the guide took us way down in this one cavern and then they turned out the lights. It was the darkest dark I've ever experience. There way no direction, no self awareness, nothing. When that kind of darkness enters your life you lose yourself. The good part about that is that if you let God shine into that darkness everything about him becomes brighter. Suddenly you are nothing and he becomes everything, the light you desperately trust and cling to for dear life. That's not a bad thing and that's why the Bible talks about suffering like it's a good thing: 

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been 

given to us.  - Romans 5:3-5 

 So when the darkness comes let it come. Allow the opportunity for God to shine brighter and grow you that much further. Our troubles are never without purpose and they are never without an end. Darkness will come in and out of our lives as long as we live here on earth. Where do you want to be when the lights come back on?

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “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 

Posted in: Life