Day 14 Walking in the Dark

Day 14 Walking in the Dark

2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. Isaiah 9:2

When I was a young private, I was assigned to a Combat Engineer Battalion. Our command team insisted on training us as infantry as well as engineers. Accordingly, I found myself humping across the training area at Fort Riley in the middle of the night, a night so dark that all I could see of the soldier in front of me was the small luminescent tabs on the back of his helmet. We’d trudged through the dense underbrush and wait-a-minute vines for hours. Suddenly, the glowing green tabs in front of me disappeared. As I wondered what had happened the ground beneath me also disappeared, and I found myself tumbling down a steep incline into the dark, landing on a pile of men and equipment. Two or three others followed me off the same precipice before the column halted. Misoriented in the dark we lost our way and stumbled into trouble.

Since the garden, our history is a string of stumbles through the darkness. We fumble about in the dark, careening from one chaotic situation to the next. We have lost our way. Oh, we make minor advances here and there, but our history, corporate and individual, is one continuous string of errors, failures, and misdeeds. God wants to shine the light of His being into our dark existence. We have seen a great light, shining into the dark night of our soul’s lost wanderings.