Bringing Light into the Darkness

In the Bible, 1 John talks about Jesus being the light of the world. It says that when we honor Jesus and love Him, we are living in the light. When we don't, we are living in darkness. People who claim to live in a "dark" world, are people who are living without accepting Jesus. God is the light of the world, so the world cannot be without light, only people can. I think it's interesting to think that darkness can often be transparent. There is always potential for light to be present in the dark. People who know God can sometimes experience darkness, but they are never far from the light. I believe that those who don't know Jesus at all still have light in them, they just aren't aware of it. The ability to experience love is the ability to experience light, even in the midst of darkness. The ability to love is a gift from God, even if people aren't aware of it. So when love is being displayed, so is the light of Jesus.

To me, this is encouraging because it means that those who don't know Jesus have the potential to meet him face to face. Christians sometimes focus on getting non-Christians to get to know Jesus by preaching to them or shoving the bible in their face. As someone who used to despise Christians. this method always irritated me. It was a turn off to constantly have religion shoved in my face. Broken people don't need religion, they need love. People who don't understand what Christ did for them, aren't going to understand the bible, which means they are going to remain living in darkness. By simple acts of kindness we are able to reach the broken. I came to know Jesus in this way. There were people in my life determined to love on me when I didn't think I deserved it. They were there for me when no one else was and they never gave up on me when I gave up on myself. I kept wondering why they were so nice to me and why they cared so much about me. But something about the way they treated me got me questioning things. In little ways, they showed me Jesus without mentioning his name. They brought light into my dark little world. They allowed me to experience Jesus. By simple acts of kindness, they were able to bring light into the darkness. This is the kind of Christian I aspire to be. I want to be able to love God so much that his love overflows into the people around me. I want to bring light into the darkness the way other people brought the light of Jesus to me.