"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 | |||
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Wait for Dark | |||
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One of the tensions of Christian hope is that we believe
things will get worse before they get better. Yet we in no way
desire things to get worse or are pleased when they go that way.
Quite the contrary. We labor with all our strength for a world in which
God is honored and the light of Christ shines bright. Yet, we also know what Jesus said in Mark 13:24-37, that His return and the completion of His kingdom would be preceded by a time of darkness, that darkness would be one of the signs of His coming. In the text, there is literal darkening of the heavenly bodies. In the verses preceding the text, there is the spiritual darkness of apostasy and persecution of the faithful. One always treads dangerous ground in attempting to give an account of why God allows the "dark side" of life and creation. Too much pious nonsense has been spoken in response to human suffering, dishonoring God and failing to respect those in pain. So I offer the following thought not as an explanation of darkness, but as a reflection on how God can use a dark backdrop to highlight the gift of His grace in Jesus. The last few years, we've visited the Powell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Unlike the Griffith Park Observatory in the middle of my native Los Angeles, the observatory in the middle of Flagstaff has been blessed by a deliberate municipal policy of suppressing artificial lighting at night. All street lights point down. All signs are limited in their amount of illumination. Everything possible is done so that from the observatory hill one can look into a naturally dark sky and pick out faint stars that would be obliterated by the normal lights of a busy city. Letting it be dark allows one to see the farthest lights. By letting our world be dark in many troubling ways, our Lord invites us to look up and discern the light of His presence and of His future coming. Without the dark, in a world so full of the lights we generate for ourselves through science, politics, and entertainment, we might miss His farther, better, deeper light. Darkness invites us, as the text invites us, to turn our eyes toward Him, and to watch. | |||
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I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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