The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. (1 John 2:8)
For several years, our family lived on one of the busier streets of suburban St. Louis. During rush hour, the cars would back up so that you couldn’t even get out of the driveway. Even in the middle of the night, there was constant traffic. It was never truly dark and never very quiet. For the last couple of years, though, we have lived in rural Tennessee, where at times it’s possible to turn out the lights at night and see the Milky Way with our own eyes. And in the early hours of the morning, the shift from darkness to daylight can be just as spectacular.
In Scripture, darkness often symbolizes life without God, while daylight symbolizes life lived in his presence. John’s community had recently experienced some false teachers who said that Christians needn’t worry much about how they lived or whether there was sin in their lives. But John counteracted that false teaching by saying that, with the arrival of Jesus, darkness began to pass away and the true light began to shine.
It’s up to us to consider and choose whether we will be people of the darkness—continuing in sin—or people of the light—growing in awareness of God’s presence and becoming more like him. Our actions indicate whether we’re asleep in the darkness or we’ve awoken to the Light.
—Kevin R. Scott
Let your actions show that you’re awake in the light of Jesus.
