MAKE MINE A LIGHT

I’ve seldom met any youngster that wasn’t afraid of the dark, nor any loving parent(s) that didn’t work diligently to help their child overcome that fear.  I find it fascinating that you don’t have to tell a little one to fear the dark—it comes naturally—or dare I say, supernaturally.  It’s preparation for adulthood.  We may be instructed to not play in traffic—we may learn experientially to not place our hand on open flame—but to sense that darkness is not good, and that light is better than darkness—that seems embossed in our psyches.  We have night lights to help dispel the darkness of a room—to have peace as we’re trying to go to sleep—but we don’t have day darks to turn darkness on midst the light of day.

Speaking of the fellowship of believers with non-believers, we’re rhetorically asked in II Cor. 6:14, ‘what fellowship can light have with darkness?’ (NKJV).

And II Cor. 11:14 points out that Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.  If light and darkness were the same, he wouldn’t have to transform himself—and if light wasn’t good, he wouldn’t care about doing it, either.

Light and dark having been battling for millennia.  We get a glimpse of it in Ephesians 6: ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,^[c] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.(NKJV), and yet not all battles are battles of this sort—at least, in the natural.

Not too long ago, while Richard M. Daley was still mayor of Chicago, several groups made it known that they were planning to violently protest a forthcoming important international meeting.  The police superintendent called on new recruits and had the short ones to stand in between the very tall veterans.  The result was that to the protesters, the veterans looked like giants, and nobody did a thing.

I grew up in Chicago, and when I was 25, found myself in the midst of my own battle—well, not so much a battle, perhaps, but definitely an emotional struggle—and it was centered in a town not too far from the Windy City-- Palos Heights, where my folks had their store.

I came to visit them and told them how I had come to a personal relationship with the Lord.  Having been raised in the Jewish faith, and having been exposed firsthand to Nazi atrocities, I never faulted my parents for the horror they expressed when I told them that.  Surely I could have kept that sort of thing quiet—been a “closet Christian”—but frankly, I don’t think you withhold the truth from those you love—no matter how hard sharing that truth is (Of course that’s much easier to do when you’ve been raised in a nurturing environment  to begin with, like I was fortunate to have been).

I was prayed-up before our meeting, and I prayed on the way back home.  When I got back to the apartment, I said to my late wife, “Hon, I think we need to just open up the Bible and study.”  This, by the way, is NOT something I normally recommend for anyone to do, but I didn’t really know better at the time, being very young in the faith.  And so, I flipped open to Psalms—a page I had not seen to that point—the very VERSE that I came to was this:

Psalm 27:10--When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up. (KJV)

“Wow,” I kept saying out loud, over and over again.  I had goose bumps where I didn’t have flesh.  Then I said to Ting, “Let’s try that one more time.”  I wound up turning to another passage I’d not seen to that point in my faith walk:

Mark 10:29--And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,[30] But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. (KJV).

In Psalm 27, David focuses on three major areas:  1)  Confidence in God as protector,  2)  Petition for ongoing help in the ongoing battles and 3)  (as Ryrie points out) Waiting on the Lord.

Throughout my life God and His angels have protected me, and I have seen, and continue to see, His protection of others—and this gives me confidence to live my life one day at a time—which gives me peace.

I continue to ask His help in the never-ending battles because He never ends in His provision therein!  Reflecting on this gives me peace.

Perhaps most importantly, I continuously apply the wisdom of the prophet Isaiah, who said in Is. 40:31--But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (KJV).  This too gives me peace—and my prayer is that it brings peace to you as well.

b(Les)sings