Light
England is obsessed with the weather and as we’re at the receiving end of unusually large quantities of snow we find it’s making headlines. The news is dominated by reporters standing in the middle of snow storms and angry motorists stuck in traffic – a pretty bleak picture is painted of the world outside.
Watching the snow and reports of snow from the inside of my cosy home makes leaving an unappealing prospect especially if it means trekking through icy roads to battle on public transport to go to boring work! Unfortunately there is no choice i had to go to work so I kitted myself up and off I went.
Only it wasn’t what I expected – cold? Yes. But also breathtakingly awesomely beautiful. Spiritual. there was such a stillness and beauty. The creator at work. No photo could capture how concrete streets had been turned to into something magical.
As I walked up my snowy street this morning I reflected on how light and darkness seem to come hand in hand and how often I focus on the dark and thereby miss the light. If I had chosen to miss out on the wintry cold of the outdoors I would have missed the delicate beauty of the snow.
Maybe I’ve just found a way to romanticise potential ankle breakages (!) but I really felt God speaking to me about fear. There is much I can be fearful of – always being alone, never seeing dreams realised, circumstances that are horrible.
But what if as we venture into the things we are afraid of God reveals to us secrets, beauty and knowledge that We would never have encountered if We hadn’t stepped out? What if life is really not about staying in the light but going into darkness bringing light into situations – asking God to use us to bring light. Maybe it all just boils down to trusting in a perfect Father and believing that he works together all things for our good. Maybe that’s a simplistic faith and it certainly does not answer some of the bigger questions of WHY we endure the things we sometimes do but maybe as we perserve, plod, endure and hope we will experience beauty.