Losing the Light

I went on a bike ride this evening to look at Christmas lights. When I left, the sun hadn't set yet, but as I biked, I gradually lost the light. Thankfully, I had brought some good bike lights with me, and a reflector vest, so when the light started to get dangerously low, I turned on the lights I had brought, so I could safely see and be seen as I rode around, looking at all the lovely Christmas lights.

The world goes through daily cycles of light and darkness. We can always count on the sun to light our days, unless we're way too close to a pole or under other extraordinary circumstances. Even on heavily overcast days, the sun reliably gives us enough light to see by. Yet, we can always count on the sun to set beyond the horizon, taking its light with it. Without the light of the sun, we will be plunged into darkness. 

But that doesn't mean that we have to go without light entirely. While the moon and stars don't generally shed enough light to do us much good, we can make our own light, usually with fire or electricity (tonight, I chose the latter). But, with but fire and electricity, the light it gives us only lasts so long. Man-made lights use energy. When the energy runs out, the light goes out. When you run out of juice in your batteries and you run out of firewood to burn, your light will fail.

However, losing the light isn't the end of the world. Daylight will return when it's supposed to, just as it always does, and you were probably going to go to sleep long before then anyway. While it's helpful to have a light source handy every waking second, not all of our seconds will be waking ones. We can live without light for a few hours each day. What's important is that we make our light last as long as we need it to. We can count on daylight during the day, but we need to make sure that, during the day, we gather enough energy to make our man-made lights last as long as we need them to.

There's almost certainly an obvious, light-based analogy in here somewhere. If we think of the light as spiritual light, then daylight could easily represent the light that comes from God, and our man-made lights could represent the spiritual light in ourselves: our own testimonies. It's easy to believe and have faith and be faithful when God and His light are readily available, but we know that we're not always going to be that lucky. There will be times of spiritual darkness, during which we will need to rely on our own spiritual light. When those times come, we can only hope that we have enough personal spiritual light to last us until the spiritual daylight returns. So, to prepare for those times of spiritual darkness, we need to gather as much personal spiritual light as we can.

God's light is abundant when available, but sometimes distant. Our own personal lights are constantly available, but limited and probably weak. Losing the light in terms of daylight or perhaps even God's light is inevitable, but temporary. Losing the light in terms of our own personal lights is usually preventable through sufficient preparation and extremely dangerous when not prevented.

The sun will continue to rise and fall, as it does, but as long as we carry light with us, "losing the light" doesn't necessarily mean that we will be completely deprived of light.