Always walking towards the light

Matthew 5:14

     You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden     

     The ideal, what we aspire to know in every fiber and molecule of our being, is that we are the light of the world because that is what God knows us to be and created us to be. But on our life journey, stuff happens and we get distracted from our journey and perhaps doubt the truth of our light. I am thinking about this upcoming week set back a few millennia to the original Holy week - only back then they just called it . . . a week. 

     Did you ever wake up and find it was a dark and dreary day? Sort of the companion to that famous literary line 'it was a dark and stormy night'. Still you might be walking along and see some incredibly dark clouds start to roll in, a front coming through that speaks to mood changes from a  rapidly falling barometer. It's all rather depressing. That would seem a good place if any to start the mood of this Holy week.

     It might seem difficult to grasp the awesome power and joy of Palm Sunday and the almost horrific counterpoint of what will transpire between now and Friday. They betrayed, stripped, whipped, tortured with thorns, paraded the holy answer to all our problems, the Savior! The enormity of these storm clouds is staggering even now.

      Can you think of your own storm clouds and embrace them to try and understand what it must have been like that week, back then?  Back in the day? We really can understand what happened, we still see it all around us. The betrayals, the crush of modern life, the ignorance, the hate, the not knowing which way to turn when every choice seems it will have a bad outcome. Have we faced our own Kobayashi Maru?  Do we begin to doubt our light?

     But we are certain about one thing, that's for sure.  Without platitudes about 'always being darkest before the dawn' and all that. We do know "It Get's Better".  I am a witness to that in my own life. It doesn't seem as certain while you going through whatever it is that darkens one's life, but it does get better.  If we have one shining example, even though the disciples all ran for the hills or outright said "Jesus, who?" as Peter did, there was a triumphant victory that we all share in. The end of that fateful week brought not darkness but joy. We have the luxury of seeing that from this side of history. It is a the journey we all share in from time to time, from joy, to darkness and on to victory. Resurrection. New Life. Unimagined, seemingly undeserved, total and complete victory. New Life. The promise of 'it get's better' delivered in the rising of Jesus Christ.

     Can we, at the times we get caught up in darkness, as we experience anew the darkness
Jesus lived through as a human - can we fix our sights on hope and light? Can we know that we too, each and every one of us, are the light of the world?