Wendy Duckworth Vance
When I was a child, one of my favorite things to do was to go visit with my grandmother. There were many reasons that these visits were special, but one of those was having the opportunity to look at the night sky. I was raised in a small town, but it had just enough city lights to block out most of the stars. When I went to my grandmother’s, we were in the country, away from manmade lights and graced by the starry glitter of Heaven. The stars were so bright and beautiful, too many to count. To this day, I can close my eyes and I can see the twinkling little points of light. It was hard to imagine anything more beautiful. As I got older, we began to get images from telescopes in space and what I saw in that country night sky paled in comparison. I could never have imagined the brightness, the beauty, the rich colors and patterns of the star clusters, solar systems, and galaxies, each crafted and placed by the hand of God, each an individual masterpiece on the canvas of the universe. Yet even in their beauty and brightness, they cannot begin to compare to the glory of the Lord. The Word tells us that God’s glory is so bright that in the new world to come at His return, we will not have need of the sun, the moon, or the stars because in the light of God’s glory there will be no night (Revelation 21:23-25).
In our wildest imaginings it would be difficult to envision a world in which there is no darkness. On the brightest day, the sun still cannot banish all darkness -shadows and shade remain. Our technology and lights that can burn twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year,cannot eradicate darkness; there will always be some corner, some space the light does not reach. And even if we could invent a light that would illuminate every dark corner, we would still not erase all darkness;blinded eyes would remain.
I do not speak of literal, physical blindness, but rather blindness of a spiritual nature. We have eyes to see,but we live as if we are in darkness, as if God does not exist. We see the evidence of His hand, such as in the beauty in the stars or the brilliance of the colors of the spring flowers, but we turn our backs, looking desperately for any other answer, anything that will allow us to deny the existence of God. We look because we know that if we acknowledge the existence, the realness of God, then we must also acknowledge the truth of His Word. An acknowledgement of His Word as truth then means we must open our eyes to ourselves and acknowledge that we are imperfect, selfish, hopeless, helpless, unworthy,covered in the filth of our sin and in need of God’s grace.
The problem of having to acknowledge ourselves as imperfect or in need of help flies in the face of societal convention and the mindset of rugged independence that says, “I don’t need help” and parenthetically we include God in this sweeping disgust of needing or accepting help despite being surrounding by the dumpster fire that we have created. And so we dismiss His wonders, we chalk up His handiwork as a cosmic accident requiring no moral code, and try to live for the enjoyment of the moment. For in a world without God there is no consequence, no plan, no purpose, no sin;there is this moment only. I have no responsibility for another living being because my existence is all about me. Thus we continue in our spiritual darkness, desperately trying to patch the cracks in the foundation of a fallen and dying world.
But friends, this need not be the end of the story, there is a way which I have already alluded to, for the same God who placed each star and knows each by name also loves and knows you. He stepped onto the pages of history and gave Himself as the sacrifice lamb. He took on Himself the weight of all our imperfections, all our sins – He took on the death that we deserve that we might be free. He set us free of the bondage of a life lived for self that more often than not leads to destruction. He gives us a heart of flesh (soften a hard heart), new eyes that can fully see the world that lies beyond ourselves. Emptied of ourselves, we are able to receive His Spirit, and full of the Spirit we become as a star in that country night sky– a point of light and beauty in a world of darkness.
To those who have accepted Yeshua (Jesus), I say let your light shine in this present darkness. To those in darkness, I say be set free by the Maker of the stars and in the warmth of His light, find rest.
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