“God is light and in Him is no darkness at all!!” 1 John 1:5.
I have been so wonderfully blessed to have done a lot of traveling in my life. There have been some awesome trips that we have taken as a family. We’ve traveled out west to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, and all the sights in-between. All of these sights have been magnificent and remind me of just how awesome God is. To think that He created them all for us to enjoy.
The one trip that sticks out the most in my memory is when we went to Alaska. We set out with a camper in the bed of a pickup truck, a station wagon, and a popup camper. You see we were camping all the way up and all the way back. We stayed in mainly free campsites, where you just pulled in, set up camp, and stayed the night and hit the road the next day. There was no electric, no running water (except maybe a stream nearby), and you did all your cooking on a fire or camp stove, (maybe this is why I’m not a big camper today).
We made it to Alaska and stayed in several different places before pulling into Mt. Denali National Park. We were able to get a campsite there and planned to stay for 3 days. We drove back to see the mountain, which was amazing. Did a lot of hiking. Spent a lot of time as a family around the fire at the campsite. Again the only running water was in the bathroom for the toilets and in the sink, NO SHOWERS!!! The other thing was that is only got dark about 2 hours a night and even then it really wasn’t dark, just kind of dusk.
This one night my three brothers and I were playing canasta in the popup camper, which is where the four of us slept, and we were having a great time. With it still being light out we had no idea what time it was. Everyone else had gone to sleep and we were just having a great time together. We were warming up water on the camp stove in the camper and having hot chocolate, laughing, and just being brothers. There was all of the sudden a knock on the door of the camper. My father opened the door and told us that it was past time to go to bed. We asked what time it was because it was still light outside. We told him we were waiting for it to get dark out before we went to bed. He said that it was 2 a.m. and that it was as dark as it was going to get.
That story got me thinking about God and this verse, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” Think about that for a minute…are you thinking? God is light. Light…we turn on the light so that we can see what’s in the room, unless you’re like me and think you know what’s in the room and walk into the dark room anyway. (I did that the other night and split my toe wide open, not fun). When you turn on the light, you can then see everything and there’s no darkness. God comes into your life and shines His light into your life and there’s no darkness. Everything is exposed.
Now, that’s a scary thought for some. To think that everything is exposed. Maybe I don’t want everything exposed. However, you have to remember that when we come to know the Lord as our Savior, God the Father wants to mold us into the image of His Son. That means that everything needs to be exposed so that He can deal with it. He wants to set us free from the things in the “dark.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anything lurking in the dark. I want the things that might hurt me exposed. I want the things that might enslave me exposed. This way I can avoid them. I can put them under the blood of Jesus. I can have them defeated in my life. I can overcome them. But only when they are brought out into the Light.
I want to encourage you to bring things out into the Light, God’s Light. We enjoyed that night of playing games in the camper, which by the way we had all the blinds drawn to block out the light, another principle in that as well. Light still came through around the corners and edges of the blinds. Open your life and let His Light come in and scatter the darkness of your life today. Praying for all of you and hope you’re staying safe.
Pastor Rob
