For SUN24, 2013 It’s the darkest of nights. Total and complete darkness. We can’t move, even breathing is strained. This happened to us. It was back in the days when the tours through Carlsbad Caverns included turning off all the lights. They don’t do it anymore, they tell us, and the darkness caused serious anxiety on the part of some.* Then there is a pinpoint of light. It might be a burning match, or a cigarette lighter, or a tiny flashlight. And we move toward it. Toward the light. Would that this was the way ‘of all flesh.’ This morning at 8:30 I’ll be preaching on ‘Moving Toward The Light.’ It may not be profound but it will come from heart and experience. (With a little ‘head’ thrown in hopefully.) As a young guy working on a shrimp boat, we were caught in a dark and windy storm. I remember water across the deck in great power, and our falling into a ‘through’ between huge waves. “There!” the boss captain shouted, “There!” I was holding on so tightly that I hesitated to look in the direction he pointed. We all saw it at the same time (there were four of us aboard)---a slight glimmer of light ahead and to our starboard side. The captain brought us about and headed straight for the beam of that distant buoy light. It helped guide us safely home. “God is light,” (I John 1:5) That has always been true I’m sure, but it lends itself to an even broader sense of reality in our time than when it was written. If we are willing to be open to God speaking in many voice, and from a lot of different sources, we find exciting new ideas. Here’s one from Abe Feder, a professional in ‘architectural lighting. “He does with light as a composer of music does with sound,” the New Yorker once wrote of this man. (His favorite song was ‘Push Back the Darkness,’ and as we preacher types put it: “That’ll preach!) “Light,” Feder wrote, “is a physical material that can fill space without actually filling it.” “Lighting.” He goes on, especially at nigh,t can make you see things you’ve never seen before.” As light, God can be present ‘filling the space’ while at the same instant not filling it in ways far beyond our understanding. No wonder Jews are slow and careful even when speaking the divine name out loud. With God one speaks of Presence when unseen, and Mind At Work without our full understanding. Another pioneer in the area of architectural lighting, Lesley Wheel, adds (light!) to this discussion: “After you realize something remarkable, you want to pass it on.” This woman was always willing to share the benefits of her research and discovery. The secular speaks of the sacred. It’s all God’s of course, but too often we look in too few directions for the magic and wonder of revelation. God can fill space all right---space ‘out there,’ and space in the human heart. When that Light shines outside and inside of us, we see things we’ve never seen before. It’s like the wonder of the man blind from birth given sight again by Jesus (John 8); imagine what seeing light and all the rest of it did to his soul! And Ms. Wheel: Physicist and lighting engineer indeed, but also an evangelist of the finest kind. Wanting to share the remarkable with any who might want to know about it. That God is light is so. That we might come to know better what this means, and how best to show that faith is a real world experience for now, and new world experience for later, and a world like you never dreamed of in your wildest dreams out there on the other side of now. It makes darkness go away. Happy Sunday. Always love, always, Keith
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:23:26 +0000
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