Sound of Surviving Blog

Do you remember when you were little and were afraid of the dark? I remember the dark in my childhood bedroom caused the tree outside of my window to cast scary shadows on my walls, which looked like monsters. I would be so terrified. Then my mom or dad would come in and turn the light on, and the shadows, and thus the “monsters” would disappear. I would always be slightly baffled at how quickly those “monsters” would evaporate into the light, because they seemed so real just a moment before.

Sometimes, in our lives, we feel like this. We are in the dark, surrounded by terrifying things. But we have a constant light in our lives, waiting for us to call on him. His name is Jesus. His bulb never goes out. Even when we are walking through uncertain realms, and everything is murky and unclear to us. When it feels like nothing is going right, we just need to reach over and call or turn on our light.

There have been times when it feels like the world is crumbling around me, like everything is falling to pieces. Then I cry out to God, and say, “Lord, help me to see what you are doing in my life.” And by his light, I can see that those pieces aren’t falling apart, the way I thought they were, but coming together to form something greater. As Christians, we’re called to let Jesus, our light, shine so that others can see Him, but we also need to let it shine on our own lives sometimes, so that we can keep going.

There will be times in your life, as there have certainly been in mine, where you don’t have the strength, or the energy to roll over and turn the light on. Those are the times when we just have to whisper his name, “Jesus, help”. Then we turn to him, our lantern in the dark, and we trust him and let him guide us forward through our murkiness, through our uncertainty. After all, in Psalm 119:105, it is written, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” If we keep our lantern on, and cling to Him, and His word, we will be able to say, “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken,” like David in Psalm 16:8, and in Psalm 27:1, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid”.

There is nothing for us to fear with God on our side. He is our strong tower, our lighthouse. Our light has never been out of our reach.  He has never left us. He is just waiting for us to call on him.