"To Him be glory forever": light

Friday, January 16, 2015

It's a Fact

Tomorrow I'll be preaching from Paul's letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 9-14. After I had written my sermon I found myself continuing to linger over one particular verse, 13, where Paul says this:

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,"[1]

In just a few words Paul is talking about what is an accomplished fact for all people with faith in Jesus. They have been taken, rescued even, from the kingdom of darkness, where they essentially lived as prisoners, and placed into the kingdom of Christ. They have been taken to a place that is so utterly different from the place of darkness that we could say that the difference is blinding.

Paul calls the first place the "domain of darkness," which suggests to me a place that is unbelievably dark. It is hard to find a place that dark in real life. Think perhaps of a cave, a mine, or the interior of a ship when the power is off. A place that is so dark your eyes never adjust, and never will.

And the other place, "the kingdom of his beloved Son." A place that is dazzling in its brilliance when we first come into it. So bright that we put on our sunglasses and find that we are still squinting. Like the sun shining on new fallen snow.

But the difference of the kingdom of the Son is that our eyes do begin to adjust. We begin to see with clarity the beauty of our Lord and the place he has prepared for those he loves.

And that is what I find myself coming back to in this verse, that by faith in the work of Christ Jesus, the images of the cross and the empty tomb, deliverance has been accomplished, for me, and for all who believe.

It's a fact. I no longer am a prisoner of the domain of darkness but have been transferred to the kingdom of the Son. May this fact also be true of you. Amen.

[1] Verse 14 ends the sentence, saying, "in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Friday, January 17, 2014

Darkness and Light

"Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer."

The picture on the right side of this post is a picture of our youngest daughter. My wife took it yesterday while we walked to the post office. She is the youngest of our five children and the only one still living at home. In this picture she is just being herself.

We delight in her exuberance, which is frequently on display. There is rich story of how she came to be our daughter and we thank God daily for bringing her into our home. Parenting her is hard work but every day we experience joy as her mom and dad. She is a very bright light in our life.

Last night we received some hard news about a member of our congregation. This member's daughter had tragically died during the afternoon. At perhaps the same time we were walking to the post office and enjoying our daughter there was another person, someone we know, losing her daughter. As her pastor, I went to visit this member in her home yesterday after hearing the news. There was much sorrow in that place. It was the darkest, most painful space I have been in since coming to this ministry last summer.

Since last night I have spent some time thinking about the brightness of light and the emptiness of darkness, and how thinly separated they can be at times. Being a pastor, and also being in the midst of preparing a sermon, I thought primarily about spiritual light and spiritual darkness.

We live as fallen people in a fallen world. There is no shortage of evidence of the pervasiveness of sin throughout the world, and as a Christian I know that the evidence is as close as my own heart. In the opening verses of his Gospel John reminds us that in Christ "Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

The verse at the top of this post is from Paul, writing to the church at Rome. As I continue to serve God among my congregation during this difficult time I do so knowing that I have no answer to the question of why God allowed this person to die at this time.

But what I do know is that no circumstance in life, no matter how joyous or painful, takes away the hope that we have as people of faith in Christ. As we grieve we may not be in a place of rejoicing, but we are in a place of prayer, praying to the one who is, and always will be, the truest Light.

The darkness has not overcome the Light of Christ, and it never will. Amen.