What if Saint John was wrong? “The light shines in the darkness,” he wrote, “and the darkness has not overcome it.” Except when it does.
When the line of cars awaiting food boxes in our church parking lot grows longer each month while the pallets of rice, beans, grapes, and oatmeal shrink as federal funds are reallocated.
When the victims of child sex trafficking line up and testify, but it is the facilitators of such evil who see the light of day. Justice is redacted in darkness.
When there are lines of caskets in the country of my ancestors because the lights in the darkness are not stars, but drones seeking targets to steal, kill, and destroy.
When I realize I naively pledged my childhood allegiance every morning believing there would be “liberty and justice for all.” Yet now women in school pick-up lines, men on ladders lining houses with holiday lights, and Christian refugees are arrested without warrants and denied due process.
When you look at the night sky and see only black.
The light shines in the darkness. Really?
“Yes,” my friend reminds me. “You’re merely using the wrong lens.”
I’m skeptical of her confidence. Is there light in the sky I cannot see?
My husband adds scientific credence to her conjecture. The sky is illuminated when there’s an eruption of solar material and magnetic fields from the Sun’s surface. It’s called a coronal mass ejection. The KP index rises. And if the northern sky is clear, the aurora borealis might just be visible.
I still didn’t see it.
Until I did, when I switched lenses and took a picture of the sky with my iPhone.
What was dark to my naked eye was suddenly pink and green on my camera screen. As this was my first time witnessing the northern lights, I was giddy. I brought out a tripod, put on warmer clothes, and fiddled with long exposure settings. For the next 90 minutes I marveled at the dancing light.
My friend was on to something. When the light goes out, the Irish know how to ask for it back. “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,” they sing.
Maybe I couldn’t see the Light in the dark world because I wasn’t using the right lens. Nor looking where the Christ index was high.
Bit by bit, over the next week, the light crept in.
Not in the political headlines though. Instead I saw rays of mercy in the firsthand account of an Ukrainian seminary reaching through the chaos and fear of Russia’s invasion to bring potatoes and insulin into Kherson and offer transportation out.
Light wasn’t found in news podcasts either. But there it was when I switched over to interviews about Christians seeing the Light transform the hearts of Muslims in Iran.
Light wasn’t under my shoes on the sidewalk, but only in the looking up to greet a neighbor. She came with an invitation to learn wheat milling and bread baking with her. Yes, let there be light and yeast together.
In fact, there is always light in this world I cannot see. Sunrises and sunsets are happening every moment on this globe. Brilliant new stars are born all the time in our galaxy. Northern lights dance whether or not only the Creator sees them.
Do we not all need friends like Joseph Bayly reminding us: “Don’t forget in the darkness what you learned in the light.”
Father of the heavenly lights, grant me eyes and faith like Saint John to see and believe that your Light shines in the darkness and darkness will never overtake it. In your great mercy, fill me with joy to dance under the night sky.
Lord, come quickly.
