Last night we had a pretty intense storm. On Tuesday nights, I attend Vintage, which is a college age service about 2 hours away. I love it so much, it could be 5 hours and I probably still would go! But anyways, it was a crazy storm! Our Pastor, Wes, kept asking us to focus because the thunder and rain were so loud. It sounded like the building was going to come down. In any event, after leaving church and dropping a friend off, I started out on my nice 1 and a half hour drive home. Typically, my drives home include blasting Klove and just rocking out and worshiping God all the way home. It’s really nice honestly, and it can always lift my spirits up and better my mood. And I drive slower than normal, just enjoying time with God.
But, on the way home, I started coming across lots of dark town. Lots of street corners with no stop lights. Major intersections with no traffic lights. Whole stretches of high ways with no street lights. And what made it more eerie, I was the only car on the road. It was just me and my headlights lighting up the road for what felt like forever. And honestly, I wanted to drive faster. I wanted to get home. It was this eerie, nothings out there kind of darkness. It was uncomfortable!
And then my radio station went static. So I switched it to the other Klove station. Nothing. More static. Switched to the Top 100 station and got to hear some not-so-lovely music about some guys night last night with lots of women….not my thing to listen to. Tried the country music station, and they were singing away. Tried the station where the pastor gives different messages from time to time, static. Tried family life, static. No Christian music station was up and running. None. But every other station was.
Now, I’m a firm believer that God teaches us all the time, even when we don’t know we are being taught. And it was completely in my face, at least in my mind, what God wanted me to learn. And here is what I got out what seemed like a Godless, dark, eerie drive home…
After a storm, it is so easy to thinking… Where is God? Why didn’t he help us get through that. It is so easy to just drift away into the darkness, because if we are being honest with ourselves, the light can sometimes light up parts of our lives we’d rather keep in the dark. It is easy to turn to things that bring earthly pleasure instead of Godly peace after a storm. And if your being honest with yourself, you can probably agree with that. Sometimes we are more comfortable being in darkness than in light, even though we know that the light is our saving grace. Storms make us seek shelter. And even though that physical shelter may be dark, we can be the light. We can turn to our shelter, God, and be filled with His warm, comforting light and give that to others!
Being the only person on the road for a long period of time, I still treated every dark intersection like a 4 way stop. And at my first intersection, another car blew right by me. But after many, many intersections of just me, I came to another one. In the not-too-far-off distance, I saw another car coming. I waited for them because, well, it was nice to see more headlights. They were coming towards the intersection really, really fast. But I think once they saw me, they slowed down and stopped at the intersection too. I went, and they turned to follow me. I wasn’t alone on the road anymore! And at every intersection after that, they stopped too. But then they turned after about 3 more blocks.
I also realized just how dark our world is without light. A lot of very prominent and bright buildings in the city were off. Just driving by it made me feel strange. I drove by a high school, you wouldn’t have even known it was there. There were no stars in the sky, but the moon did break through the clouds every once in a while. It was just dark. This thick, black darkness that just made me feel alone. I didn’t like it. I think God just wanted me to see that a world without him is just darkness. He is light, a light that darkness cannot even comprehend. And I may have been just one car, and my headlights may have just lit up the road for a short bit, but it lit up the road enough for that one car to see. For that one car to follow suit and be safe.
We might never know where our light is shining, who is seeing it and what darkness we are illuminating. We might never know what secret dark corners of the world we are lighting up when we walk into them. But because the light of God shines in us, we are that light. I waited at that intersection just to see another car, because the light from their headlights were comforting to me. We ought to be like that for people who don’t know Christ. Our presence should comfort them. And maybe that car was planning to stop at that intersection where the traffic signal was out, but maybe it wasn’t. And maybe I got to be a role model for them on how to handle these scary dark roads. And we ought to do that in our daily life as well, being a role model for how to navigate dark and scary situations. Whether we know it or not, we have the worlds best navigator inside of us. The Holy Spirit. And it will guide us in every decision we make in our lives if we let it! And that path will be the path of grace, of love, of righteousness. And it will be that light, like a lighthouse ushering a ship to shore, a comforting and guiding light.
We have the power to be this light in our lives. We have the power to brighten up the darkness. We have the power to light up the path of righteousness, the path to God. We have that power, the Holy Spirit, inside of us, lighting us up. And for those of you who believe you are too much of a mess, too broken, not worthy to have that light shining in you… Listen to this song. The chorus goes like this;
“Through the cracks in all of us,
Through the fractures and our dust,
You shine through, You shine through
In the darkness You’re the dawn,
Blazing like the morning sun,
You shine through, You shine through“
Gods light shines through us. Through the cracks we all have. Past the scars we all bare. Through the fractured, broken pieces of our lives. God is there. He is always at work. Even when it feels dark and eerie, when you feel alone on a long, dark road, God is present.
Dear God, I pray that you help us to remember that we can be a light for you. We may not be the best “Christians” or the best role models or the best anything, but we are yours. Help us to live that to the fullest and really, really mean it. Help us to find areas in our lives that we are trying to hide from the light, and illuminate them for your grace to work through. Help us to let this light shine through us, not to stifle it or hide it from anyone, but to let it be a guiding light to those around us. You are perfect God, you love us. You guide us every day. You know us. Illuminate us, God. Amen.
