Be a light
Do we trust the Lord to lead us through this wooded valley of tears?
Sounds, sights, smells and sensations assail us on all sides. The strength of our pitiful, mortal hearts fails. Our limbs tremble and quake with fear.
We cannot shut our eyes or close our ears. We cannot really, truly flee these pains. To deaden ourselves to them is to succumb to them. There is no other world for us to escape into via substance or distraction. There’s no internal fantasy land where we can hide.
What are these places, any such fantasy world where God isn’t present, but another kind of hell?
We cannot shut our eyes. Our Lord compels us to see. He wants us to strive to look on His face, and in doing so follow Him as He leads us onward. He takes us into green pastures, where the howling of fanged maws, slavering with bloodlust, are but a bad dream and fading memory.
Picture then a lost sheep wandering in the dark, fell eyes glowing with an evil delight haunt the woods around him. The woods in which it wanders are the blackness of a primeval night. This sheep is blind to danger in such a darkness, having fallen far off the narrow path, but danger isn’t blind to it.
However, there’s not a cloudless night that’s devoid of light. As there is one sun in radiant, majestic glory to guide by day, there are many distant stars, bright with the same light glowing in our Sun. These little lights can prod and pray the sheep back onto the narrow road through the wooded valley. Get him caught up with our Lord, the Son of God, the Light.
When the stars are blinded to the sheep’s eyes by thick clouds or a mist, then that poor creature has truly become lost. We must ask that God reach out with strong hands and pluck him out of danger. So many have been destroyed like that: having lost their way and been forsaken by the little lights in their lives.
Be a light in the darkness to those who are lost. There are no clouds or mist through which light cannot burn.
There is no dark ocean, no chasm of sorrow, over which man has not gone to reach man before. We always find our boat, our bridge, that we can trust to take us where we need to go. To take us where we are needed most.