Even the Darkness

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
(Psalm 139:11-12)

Darkness, with brazen and bold advance, broke through a glass door and assaulted the innocence of an elementary school and a stunned community.

Bullets flew where spitballs should.  Unfettered evil roamed without a hall pass.  Darkness – cave like darkness – invaded Sandy Hook.

God knew there would be darkness.  He describes it.  He exposes it.  He even relays stories about it.  But always without surrender.

There is no white flag waving in Newtown, CT.  There is pain, and grief, and horror, and fear, and incalculable loss… but there is no surrender.

Surrender acknowledges that there is no way out, no escape, no possible victory…

Yet, in the swirl and the aftermath, there is a flee to hope.  Individuals and communities and countries cling to what had been ignored or dismissed or abandoned.  Darkness hasn’t extinguished God.  Evil has not obliterated light.  There is blood trickling from the nose of civility and honor, but the fighter remains… with more resolve, with more power, with more commitment, with more humility, with a tighter embrace to the substance of life instead of the stuff of life… our eyes are now sensitized to light, because we have seen the darkest of the dark.

Light.  Pure, unfiltered light.  Even the darkness is not dark to our God.  He was not scrambling for matches or flashlights or batteries.  He is inextinguishable.  He is light.  Always and forever light.

God does not discount evil.  He hates it.  He confronts it.  He exposes it.

But when evil seems unconstrained, God is the first responder.  Light shows up.  Sometimes we call this Christmas.  God, becoming man.  God, invading darkness.  God, giving us a child; His child.

We caught a glimpse of this in the heroes of Newtown – a teacher, a principal, a policeman, a parent, a student… God with us.  Light in the darkness.

And now, as pastors and parents and counselors and politicians embrace a new agenda… an agenda of redemption and healing… light shines all the more.  Contrast provides vivid images.  Light has a background that now sets it off as never before.

Even the darkness is no match.  Especially the darkness is no match.

For our friends in Sandy Hook.  For all those who bring light.  God is with you.