sunlight

On a dreary, weathered day in Wheaton my heart beats hard for the Arizona sun. Mere months ago I can remember yanking down the visor in my car to block the harshness that desert sun beams at odd hours close to sunset. I would drive around, in complete frustration that I was experiencing the 163^rd straight day of sunshine. When you live in Arizona, you think clouds are cool. You think rain boots are a fashion statement over any portion of practicality. You dream of ‘cozy’ days inside to drink tea and wear slippers because it’s… (gasp cued here) 55 degrees outside.

I was such a poser. I lived a sunny life slightly out of touch of reality and in a constant fairyland of unused defrosters, and untouched wiper blades.  But on a day like today in Illinois, I turn the lights on in the house at 3:30 p.m. and play my new favorite game online.  The game goes like this… www.pinterest.com, sign in, search ‘sun’… pin, pin, pin. Search ‘sunlight’… pin, pin, pin. Search ‘regret’. (Just kidding on the last one. )

In step with the weather today, I found out some sad things from friends that I know, received prayer requests for real pain and real hurt from others I don’t know, and took the time to glance at a few headlines of this wild world around me, and suddenly there was a pit in my stomach from the digestion of how dark, feeble, and how incredibly ruthless this world can seem.

Where is the hope? What does true deliverance from pain feel like? Can we really heal? How do we even begin to make sense of all this darkness? What is it that gives our human hearts relief from that achy, hungry feeling that this world really is… it?

Jesus is becoming more and more the beginning and the end in my life. He’s what makes me feel like nothing in a way that gives me grace-covered confidence. He increases in me when I get smaller. He heals parts of my heart that I neglected to label as broken. He makes new of my old, tireless tendencies, redeems what I don’t deem worth his time, and chuckles to himself when I squint my eyes to try to imagine just how good heaven might be.  

There’s a light that’s ridiculously harsher than the setting, Arizona sun. There's no blocking this light with a visor or a pair of Ray Bans. Jesus is the light of a world spun out in darkness. And whether it’s perceived through a ray of sunlight, a burning bush, or at the end of long tunnel, one thing is for certain,

“this light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” John 1:5