Everything changes in the dark.   What is familiar and comforting in daytime, becomes sinister and disquieting in the dark of night.   Our closet is filled with looming, threatening forms.   And the area under our beds, which houses nostalgia by day, becomes a haunt for all manner of unimaginably malevolent beasts at night.    Even as an adult, I still sleep with my hands under my body.  A holdover from my childhood when I feared any uncovered hand drifting to the edge of the bed would be met by a slimy, cold, deadly grasp.

Darkness brings fear, uncertainty, complication.   It is hard to function in the dark.   You realize this on your first camping trip.  Without a flashlight or headlamp, movement is difficult.  Nothing is where you remember it being.  The simple becomes complicated.   And every squirrel sounds like Bigfoot.   We are all scared of the dark.   It is a fear we never outgrow.

The language of our distress makes this clear.   A trying time is “dark night of the soul.”  Depression is a “black hole.”  Death is the “valley of the shadow of death.”  Quite literally the phrase translated, “shadow of death” in the Bible means “deepest darkness.”   A darkness like that of a cave.  A darkness so thick that nothing can be seen.  A darkness in which you can only grope your way around.  A darkness that can be felt.   Felt in the deep places of your heart, mind, and soul.

 The phrase “deepest darkness” in scripture often describes fear, oppression, and judgment for sin.   Hell is described as “outer darkness.”  When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, Jesus compared sin to darkness and salvation to light.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3:19-21

And speaking in the Temple, Jesus declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 

And elsewhere we read.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 

1 John 1:5-7

It is not insignificant that the first element of creation is light.  God’s first creative order of business is to establish light and dispel darkness.  Light brings clarity, light reveals what is true, enlivens, empowers, and reflects and refracts the beauty of all God made.  In God’s eternal kingdom there is no darkness at all.  As Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as a city of light we read,

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb.

Revelation 21:22-23

And in the Tabernacle, God’s temporal representation of this eternal reality he also provides continual light.   Significant among its furnishings was the Golden Lampstand.  God directed its seven lamps to be lit perpetually, providing light both for the priests as they ministered and for the people as they looked toward God’s tent and saw that his light was always on.   As with all the furnishings of the Tabernacle the Lampstand spoke of God’s abiding presence, continual provision, and redemptive plan for those who come to Him.

Light gives life.  Life to all created things.  And life to our eternal being.  In the opening of John’s gospel, the beloved disciple writes of Jesus as the true light.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind… The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 

John 1:4, 9-13

Join us as we examine Exodus 25:31-40 and consider the beautiful promises bound up in the Golden Lampstand and the true ‘light of life’ to which it points.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.