Look for the Light

This past winter I traveled to my childhood home in the northern woods of Wisconsin. My soul hungers for the inky dark nights and the quiet forests, and when I’m there in winter, I spend a lot of time staring out the windows at the trees and the snow.

The temperatures hung below zero during my entire visit, and the only things making their way through the frozen landscape were whitetail deer and the occasional snowmobiler. I miss that sort of solitude and tranquility the most now that I live in bustling Southern California.

My parents have lived in the same house for nearly thirty years, so their landscape is as familiar to me as my own body. I know each birch tree, each pine, the way the trail cuts a slightly curved path away from the basement door and down to the shoreline.

On New Year’s night, as I got ready for bed, I looked out my bedroom window and gasped.

“What?” my husband asked.

“Look!” I pointed. He joined me at the window and looked out over my parents’ vast, wooded backyard. Each tree cast a long shadow. The snow sparkled like diamonds.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Supermoon,” I said. We watched for several moments in wonder, the backyard lit up as though it were a cloudy afternoon rather than nearly midnight. The moon itself had a wavy corona around it, blazing through the frosty night air. It seemed impossible to imagine that the moon wasn’t casting its own glow, shining its own light.

Annie Dillard, in her 1982 essay “Total Eclipse” (to this day, one of the best pieces of writing I’ve ever encountered and well worth a read), writes of the surprising but totally obvious point that as an eclipse approaches, the moon is present but unseen. “You do not see the moon,” she writes. “So near the sun, it is as completely invisible as the stars are by day.”

The moon has no light of its own. It can only reflect the light of the sun.

So it is with Jesus. So it is with us. In John 8:12, Jesus speaks to a crowd of Pharisees, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (NIV).

The light of Christ is bold. It’s surprising. Even when we’re already familiar with the landscape, it sometimes appears brand-new. In a presentation to the Oxford Socratic Club, C. S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

Our Light and His

I preach a couple of times each month at my church in California, and my worst sermons come when I try to be the light, to shine some new attention or interest or angle on an ancient text. As a wise seminary professor once told me, “Don’t try to do more than Scripture. Scripture is everything. Let God speak.”

Yes, Jesus tells his followers they (we!) are the light of the world. In Matthew 5:16 he encourages believers to “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (NIV).

But even this light is not our own. It’s a reflection of the light he shines on us, lights in us, and sparks among us.

A Useful Light

Christians tend to fall into one of two camps when it comes to light. They blind people with it, or they hide it. They wield it like a light saber—all violence and no comfort—or they stuff it away in the trunk of a car, doing good to no one at all.

The light of Christ is always useful—a lamp on a stand, a city on a hill, a candle in the darkness. A light that guides, warms, and like a lighthouse, warns away from rocky shores. The light is always there. It’s unmistakable. “A town built on a hill cannot be hidden,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:14 NIV).

In the dark times, look for the light. When the path is rocky, it will light your steps. When the seas are stormy, it will guide you home. For even in the darkest night, he shines brighter.

Courtney Ellis writes and blogs at CourtneyBEllis.com. An author, speaker, and pastor, she lives with her husband and two littles in southern California. You can follow her on Facebook.

Photograph © Jesse Orrico, used with permission