Living Beyond the Darkness

Scripture Text: Ephesians 4:17-24

This issue of “darkness” always seems to create problems for us, especially when it is used to compare non believers to Christians. To help understand this issue of "dark" a little better, I would like to read the first few verses of the Bible:

Genesis 1:1-5a “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’.”

As God began His creation, it all started with darkness. How many of us, as children, and possibly even later in life, didn’t like the dark? The problem with the darkness is that you have no perspective, no reference, no vision of what surrounds you. If we try to move through a dark room, we trip over things that have been in that same spot for years! We can’t see the dangers, and we can’t see the things we seek.
When I was in my teens, a bunch of friends and I liked to play “hide and go seek”. Now our game was a little different than the standard version. We played it in the summer, when there was no school, the curfews were later, and we played our game in the dark. If you think hide and seek is tough in the daylight, you should try it at night. And I lived in the country - no street lights back in those days! Trust me – it took a whole different skill set to win at this new approach!

And the Genesis passage tells us that “the earth was formless and empty”. The things needed to form earth and the universe were all in place, but the Lord hadn’t done anything with them, yet. It was all there, but in a state of total chaos.
When I was growing up, my brothers and I had boxes of tinker toys and Lincoln logs – today, it’s Legos and other building sets. When we dump them out of the box, all of the components are there for houses or cars or castles or Ferris wheels, but I defy the most casual observer to identify any of those structures PRIOR to assembly! The one who will build can see the end product, even while it’s still in it’s ‘chaotic state”, but no one else can.
God knew full well what creation would look like when it was finished, but we have no idea what it will be like. Seeing in the Light, versus seeing in Darkness

Paul compares the life of non believers to the first moment of creation. He tells us that “They are darkened in their understanding”. Darkness keeps us from fully understanding where we are, or knowing how to get to where we want to go, or even knowing what we can expect along our journey.
The non believer is on his own – he is separated from God, and that can never be good!
Paul also tells us that while we are still the “darkened ones”, we have no sensitivity to what is right and what is wrong. We have no sense of what is up or down, what is in front of us, or to the left or right of our path. We don’t know if we are near goodness or if we are flirting with evil – we simply take whatever we blindly grasp.
Non believers have no moral compass, and no guide to help them choose wisely during their journey.

Now it’s true that Christians don’t always know where they are being lead, or what task may be waiting for them, but the one big advantage that believers have is that they have the Holy Spirit to guide them, just as in creation when the “Spirit of God was hovering over the dark waters” as Day 1 began.

Have you ever played the game where you are blindfolded, and another person introduces you to various smells and tastes and textures? As they tell you about the object, they can either tell you the truth, or can make up a story about it.
- They may put an orange in your hand, and tell you that it is a ball, and that you should bounce it on the floor and catch it when it returns. But if you try, you quickly discover that it’s not going to bounce – it’s going to “splat”!
- You might be handed a hard boiled egg, but told that it is a fresh egg and that you are to break it into a pan. You can hit that egg all day long, and it will never open up until you totally destroy it!
The game is funny when we are told a lie about the object, but in our human lives, it is never funny when we are lead away from God, and the Holy Spirit never leads us astray; He never leads us to a false conclusion, never to a dangerous consequence. God never lies to us, and He never plays games with us. And personally, I think I prefer the Spirit’s leading me through the darkness, instead of my being able to see where I’m going. If I had “future vision”, I probably would be trying to chart my own course in a totally different direction, and I also know that the journey would end up no where near to where God wants me to go!

Paul continues in his letter that, as Christians, we are taught to put our old lives and ways and fears behind us. We no longer depend on our own senses for guidance. We no longer have to trust that where we are is where we are supposed to be. We no longer have to believe that whatever we have blindly picked up, whether it is a habit, or a temptation, or a false belief, must be good simply because it is now ours.

And not only do we now have a renewed vision of our world, but we also have the opportunity and obligation to lead others through their darkness. The Spirit guides us, and we guide others until they come to trust in the guiding of the Spirit for their own lives. We have to be careful, though, that we always give truthful directions and explanations. When we walk through the darkness, fear of uncertainty can deafen us to the true path, and we have to be very careful that we stay on track. We have to listen carefully and closely to the Spirit’s leading.

Mother Teresa offered us some good advice – she said:
We need to find God, and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grow in silence; see the stars, the moon, the sun, how they move in silence. Is not our mission to give God to the poor in the slums? Not a dead God, but a living, loving God. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. All our words will be useless unless they come from within - words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
(quoted in James Roose-Evans, The Inner Stage [Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1990], 130)

Just because life sometimes seems to be like a game of hide and seek in the dark, it doesn’t mean that we have to constantly be stumbling around. We have the very Spirit of God with us – hovering around us at every moment, and just waiting for us to reach out for His leading.