There has been a change in plans and I am going to be obedient to what aj feel has been placed on my heart. Next week I will post the Q&A that was originally scheduled for today. In the meantime, here is a post from November 2019– perhaps my favorite post to date, about the hope of light in dark situations. This post was based on a Christmas sermon I preached and I pray it is an enjoyable read to you as much as it was enjoyable laboring over it for me.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”—John 1:1-5
I’m currently working on a sermon entitled, “There Will Be Light” from the above passage of Scripture. I was inspired by the pilot episode of the television show Gotham. Gotham focuses on detective James Gordon and the young Bruce Wayne (you might know him as Batman). Detective Gordon, outside of Bruce and his butler Alfred Pennyworth, is the only honest person in Gotham City. Gotham is this cruel, unjust city where everything and everyone is corrupt. If you aren’t part of organized crime you’re owned by it and if you’re not, you’re a fish out of water, out of your element. The show begins with the murder of Bruce’s parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne. Bruce witnessed the murders but was allowed to live. He suffers from survivors’ guilt; he felt like he could’ve, like he should’ve done something to save his parents. Unfortunately, fear paralyzed him. He has a hard time believing that it wasn’t his fault that his parents are dead. He blames himself because he survived. Once he gets on the crime scene, Detective Gordon sits down with Bruce and reassures him everything will be alright. He tells Bruce he knows exactly how he feels because when he was Bruce’s age he and his father were in a car accident and his father died—right beside him. He didn’t understand why he was allowed to live and not his father either. Detective Gordon encourages Bruce by saying, “I promise you, however dark and scary the world might be right now… there will be light.”
Many of us have had a Bruce Wayne moment where our world slides from under us in the blink of an eye. It’s traumatizing, everything you thought you knew is gone, and the world becomes foreign. It becomes dark and scary. Life will continue but because of what you went through you won’t ever fully be the same. In some ways, that’s a great thing. Sometimes what makes us stronger is what we go through. It helps create us into who we are to become. But what detective Gordon did for me that he has no idea about is that he revealed to me three things the light does: light gives energy, which means light gives strength. Secondly, light eliminates darkness. Lastly, light gives me the ability to see. The apostle John talks about the Logos or the Word, it’s the Greek equivalent to how the Jews viewed Torah; the Word is what held all things together. John equates the Word to light, but he also equates them both to a man. Later in the first chapter of the gospel of John we see that John is talking about Jesus. Jesus, according to verse 5, is the light that shines in darkness and the great thing about this light is that darkness has not overcome it.
Because of Jesus I have the ability to handle what I go through; light gives me the strength I need to move on. Because of Jesus I don’t have to stay stuck where my situation left me. I don’t have to hold grudges, I don’t have to live by how someone has defined me, I don’t have to stay in this place of fear. If I claim to believe in the God who did not give me the spirit of fear, yet I am always fearful, that fear is now my choice and no one else’s fault. I can’t keep hiding behind “I’d rather be safe than sorry.” It’s easy to disguise fear as faith, but the light allows me to move on from doing the same old things, believing lies, and staying in a place of fear. Since Jesus is my light He eliminates my darkness. This is not denial of what I went through, but it gives me hope that the darkness will not last forever. Whatever that darkness is, it cannot last. Those moments that destroyed me, that changed my life for the worse, they are temporary. I may not be who I used to be but I am stronger. Since Jesus is my light I can see what the darkness covered up. The hurt, betrayal, guilt, shame, the trauma experienced, it blinded me to who I really am. But because of the light I can see the toil that holding on to the pain and the past has caused me and those around me. Because of the light I can see who I am and who I am not.
Maybe you’re like Bruce and you’re beating yourself up and you have a hard time believing it’s not your fault. Maybe something traumatic happened to you like loss and the world is alien to you and you don’t know the next move. Maybe everything is dark. You’ve been through something and you’ve experienced survivor’s grace, but because of lies you interpret it as survivor’s guilt and you’ve attached things that’s not true onto yourself. Some of us may not be Bruce Wayne, maybe some of us are more like Detective Gordon. Perhaps we survived what should have killed us so that we can be a witness to a Bruce Wayne in the future that no matter how depressing life might be right now, with God there is always hope. I’m not sure about your particular situation, but I promise you, however dark and scary your world might be right now… there will be light.
Until next time, continue to stay guided by grace,
Tra
“While I am in the world, I am the light of the world”— John 8:5
Guided by Grace 