Think about a dark room versus a dark cave. Have you ever been in such a place that is dark and you can see your hand, yet a dark cave where you cannot see your hand. A place so dark that you question your existence, a place so very dark that you feel it swallows you up and absorbs your being?
Those are the two kinds of darkness and how they differ.
One could make a play on words and realize that the two actually could mean the same thing. That being in a dark room is without light and being in the a dark place is without light or both are the absence of light, but there is a difference.
In the complete absence of light is darkness without light whatsoever, we fall, we trip, we cannot find our way. We just sit in one place afraid to move. We keep going back over the past, over the wrongs in our life, over our mistakes and we are paralyzed with fear in the dark dark place that we choose to stay, because cannot see. We sit with our sin, enjoy our sin and continue to go back to that addiction, that pain, that hurt because it's familiar, it may even feel like 'that's who we are'.
That kind of darkness is a scary place. It is scary to not be able to move on. It is scary to not be able to see one foot in front of the other or the path to get out.
This darkness needs someone to shine the light of Christ their way. They need encouragement, help, a hand, empathy and love. The kind of love that we were taught from Christ's works, and walk.
The second kind of darkness is equally scary. The kind that darkens a room, dusk, or a dense fog that hides the truth, hides the sin, the thief that uses darkness to his advantage hiding in the shadows but still enough light to navigate. This kind of darkness is dark yet there is still some light there.
This kind of darkness a child of God gets semi lost in. Dabbling in sin, taking risks, telling themselves they live under grace but still refusing to repent, but calling themselves a believer and probably even going to church. Really scary because this poor soul is being deceived.
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
James 2:19
The second kind of darkness is all around, it's a fight for even Christians to stand in the light, to discipline themselves to be upright and abhor darkness and sin. Some say, well- we are gonna sin and somehow justify their daily fall almost sinning willfully and they live on borrowed grace. I believe if you truly love God you will try to stand in the light and not hide. You may mess up, fall, even sin but on the daily you strive, you make an intentional conscious effort to represent Christ well.
Darkness needs light. If it's debilitating- non belief darkness or just a dark place with light shining under the crack in the door. Any darkness, needs light.......
One lone candle burns, and that candle, that light is you.
You were made to share Christ's light in this dark dark world. This includes in the absence of light or in the dark places that we at times find ourselves in or around.
Be the light on a Hill, Be the lamp, the candle, the light house that shares light in this dark world.
"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; Matthew 5:14
