Let there be light!

"And now," our guide told us.  "I'm going to shut off the lights."

I've never really figured out why guides on tours of caverns like to shut off the lights.  It is actually a lot harder to see the Stalactites and Stalagmites and frankly anything about the cave with the lights out, but at this point, Jill did exactly what she said she was going to do. 

"This," she said dramatically.  "Is total darkness!  We are deep in the earth and there is no light except what comes from the electric lights.  Does anyone know what would happen if you spent thirty days in total darkness?"

No one hazarded a guess.  I thought about mentioning that you would come out all pasty white, but I didn't think that was what she was looking for.

"You would go blind!"  Jill said.

"Oh," everyone gasped.  Apparently she had heard that without light the part of your brain that controls your vision would just turn off, never to be turned on again.  A high price to pay for living in a cave and not paying your electric bill.

This didn't seem right to me and so later on I did a little research.  I found out that this simply isn't true.  People don't go blind just from being in the dark, even total darkness.

What is true is that if you spend a long time in total darkness your eyes will get really sensitive to the light.  When you leave a cave after being in the dark for a very long time the light will really hurt your eyes.

I think about the time when Jesus came to earth.  Truly, it was a time of deep darkness -- one could almost say total darkness.  Into that darkness came the Light of Life.

The sad thing is that men and women in Jesus day did not love the 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."

Nothing has changed today.  People do not love the light.  It hurts their eyes.  It exposes their dirtiness and the areas where they don't measure up.  They would rather stay in the cave in the dark.

At the same time, we need the light.  We were made for light.  We need it for Vitamin D.  We need it to see and regain our focus.

That is why, God wants to reach down into the life of each one struggling with darkness and say one simple phrase, "Let there be Light!"