One evening after dark my son and I waited for electrical linemen to
arrive and access why we were the only house in the area without electricity. I
lit a candle in the kitchen and we waited outside on the patio because without
air conditioning the temperature inside the house was warmer than it was
outside.
The flickering light of the candle in the kitchen flowed through the
windows and onto the patio where we were sitting. I commented how much light
that little candle was generating.
My son said, “Light always shines brighter in complete darkness.” He
wasn’t quoting a Bible verse, just making an observation, but his words
reminded me of John 1:5 which the Holman Christian Standard translation says,
“The light shines in the darkness, yet the darkness has not overcome it.” The
New Living Translation puts it this way. “The light shines in the darkness, and
the darkness can never extinguish it.”
And there is my favorite translation written by Giovanni di Pietro di
Bernardone, also known as St Francis of Assisi, who said it this way.
“All the
darkness in the world cannot
extinguish the light of a single candle.”
Francis of Assisi
The livescience.com website says that “if you were standing atop a
mountain surveying a larger-than-usual patch of the planet, you could perceive
bright lights hundreds of miles distant. On a dark night, you could even see a
candle flame flickering up to 30 miles away.”
The maritimenz.govt.nz website makes this comment in its history of lighthouses.
“Peculiarly, the light which could be seen for miles by seafarers, was only
just bright enough to read a book by inside the light room.”
So how does this relate to us as writers?
The way I see it, as Christian
writers the words we pen are flickers of light that penetrate the world around
us. I find both comfort and encouragement in the Apostle John’s words because
he tells us that a world which appears hopelessly dark at times will never be
completely so because of the light that Christ emits through us.
Livescience.com tells us that the Andromeda galaxy is made up of 1
trillion stars that are visible to the naked eye even though they are located
2.6 million light-years from Earth. That’s a long way! Francis of Assisi’s
light traveled to us through 800 years as he continues to inspire us in his own
words “to cherish those for whom Christ died.”
Dear Writer, I challenge you to dispel the darkness with
the light of your words!
