BP47
I live in the same small village my parents lived in–and my grandparents and my great grandparents. I’ve heard some people say that it is dark here in our little corner of the world. I’m not quite sure what they’re talking about. I do feel dark on occasion on the inside, but I don’t think it’s any darker here in my village than anywhere else.
We do have day and night here like other villages and cities. The nights are inky black but the days, of course, are a bit brighter. We don’t leave our houses when the dark shroud of night falls but during the daytime we can venture out with flashlights and headlamps to see our way through the gloom.
Glowing ones live among us. They walk around with no flashlights because they have an unnatural illumination that emanates from their faces. I don’t like them. Period. In fact, I think I hate them. They think they are better than everyone else who must go around with headlamps and flashlights. Some of them are kind and helpful but who wouldn’t be if you had the gift of the unusual light?
Another reason I detest them is because whenever they walk past me, their light falls on me and I feel bad, shameful. I hate myself enough already without their light making me feel even worse. Be gone with your accursed illumination! It is so unnatural in our natural world. It simply doesn’t belong here.
I have been very anxious my whole life. I’m not quite sure what the root of it is. I have met with a local counselor who taught me how to relax. She instructed me how to breathe properly, to focus on the moment and to accept myself with an attitude of non-judgment. She also has trained me to meditate.
During my daily times of meditation, I close my eyes or look down at my hands as they rest on my legs. (I’m always looking down, it seems). While I meditate, I picture my anxious thoughts as clouds and watch them drift by lazily in the blue skies of my mind. Instead of allowing my thoughts to worry me, I simply observe them, accept them, and detach from them. Yes, detachment is the key to it all. My counselor won’t admit it, but I think what she is training me to do is to make my anxious mind empty.
The counseling and meditation have helped. My anxiety has decreased appreciably and I am sleeping better than ever before. I think I can settle for living my remaining days the way I feel right now. I have mastered several relaxation exercises and learned to focus on the inhaling and exhaling of breathe through my nostrils. My anxiety is no longer at the level of a 105-degree fever. I am largely detached from it. I am emptying myself of anxiety.
When I stop to notice, however, I still have a low-grade anxiety running through my heart every day. My counselor-sage tells me that’s normal, that the goal of life is not to eradicate anxiety but to reduce it to a level that is bearable. After all, life is not about cure but aiming for good enough. I try to ignore the low-grade anxiety or meditate through it, but once in a while the drifting clouds of my thoughts seep into my soul and I feel like something is deeply wrong with me and the whole cosmos.
What am I to do? Tolerate my underground anxiety like everyone else? Isn’t that what we all do, actually? Tolerate things? Practice accepting everything until we live in a mind where there is no right and wrong?
Call me high maintenance or hypersensitive but I can never escape the nagging thought that something is missing in my life. Maybe a glass of wine every night will make it go away, for a while, at least.
A month ago, I tripped on a dog that was crossing the street and I fell. For goodness sake, it happened in broad daylight! How clumsy can a person be? I guess my headlamp was focused farther down the road so I didn’t see the passing dog in the gloom at my feet. The short of it is that I broke my arm and now I can’t go to work for six weeks.
Some people might rejoice at a paid vacation at home. I dreaded it. I would be alone in my little house, separated from the world and feeling very isolated. My anxiety has always been worse when I am alone or bored, without any distractions to help me detach from the clouds of my anxious thoughts.
The second day I was home from work, I decided to sit on a chair in front of my house to get some fresh air and maybe watch a few people walk by with their flashlights in the bright gloom of the day.
After I had been sitting there for a long time feeling quite alone, I heard a voice say, “When I heard that you broke your arm, I decided I’d swing by your house and bring you supper and field glasses so you can watch the hummingbirds when you get bored. You can only use your left hand, of course, to hold the binoculars.”
I looked up from my downward gaze and beheld the radiant face of one of the glowing ones from my workplace.
I immediately felt aversion and opened my mouth to drive the obnoxious person away from my presence with several choice words. But when I saw the food in his hands and the binoculars around his neck, I simply waved my hand dismissively and said, “Your gift is wasted on me. I cannot see the hummingbirds unless they are right in front of my face and in the beam of my headlamp.”
The illuminated one replied, “At the moment that is true, but I am hopeful that one day soon you will have more light in your world. Then you will be able to see the hummingbirds even at a great distance.”
I must have been unusually bored or lonely (beggars can’t be choosers, right). I invited my visitor to sit and chat with me for a while. And so began a daily routine where my sickeningly glowing coworker brought supper to my house and we would sit outside and converse.
The visits primarily focused on safe topics like work and weather and the healing of my broken arm. One day, however, my faithful visitor leaned a bit closer to me and that blasted illumination fell onto my lap. “Are you interested in receiving the Light of the world?” my guest inquired of me.
I replied by saying that I was a dedicated materialist who believed that the only reality was that which could be seen and touched with the physical senses.
“So then how do you explain my radiance?” the illuminated one asked. “Certainly, you must have noticed that when we began working together several years ago, I was as drab and gloomy as you—not an insult, mind you–but then I was changed.”
I could not disagree because this person’s transformation had been witnessed by me and many others at our workplace. At a lack for counterargument, I simply said, “You are entertaining a delusion, a pie in the sky, a fairy tale, as it were.”
“You actually believe that I can self-generate the light that shines forth from me?”
I was prepared to dismiss my visitor’s comment when I heard the words that absolutely captivated my attention: “My outward radiance is a manifestation of the inner joy I now have. Even the channel gouged into my soul at the Tragic Fall that was filled with anxiety since the day I was born now flows with something new—peace.”
The person who I despised but was growing to tolerate paused and then added, “My friend, to find the truth, you must look outside, not inside yourself. You must look up, not down. You must attach to truth, not detach from your heart.”
Shortly before my faithful guest departed that day, a glowing book was placed in my hands. I only allowed it to remain there because of the words spoken about the channel of chronic anxiety. If this book could deliver me from the nagging anxiety that was the toxic oxygen I breathed, I would receive it—in spite of my default aversion toward it.
That night under the pathetic pool of light from the solitary lamp in my office, I sat with the glowing book. I did not know where to begin reading, so I did what an acquaintance of mine had done in jest. I set the book on its spine to let it fall open where it would.
I was a bit hesitant to take this approach because my acquaintance had let the book fall open three times only to read increasingly dire messages. The first time, he encountered a passage that said, Judas went out and hung himself. The second time the pages fell open randomly, he read, Go out and do likewise. And the final time, the book opened to the words, What you must do, do quickly.
The first time I let the book fall open, I thrust my finger at a random spot on the page and read, 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. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (John 3:19-21).
Although I was greatly angered by these words that seemed to pronounce terrible judgment over me, I tried my technique again. This time, I read, And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:13, 14).
“Is this glowing book insulting me?” I growled loudly. “Is it accusing me of being spiritually dense?”
Even more incensed by what I read, I slammed the book shut. I was prepared to hurl the vile tome into the darkness but something within me told me to let it fall open one last time–no doubt my obsessiveness speaking to me that I must do things in sets of threes to complete some type of symmetrical behavior.
When the book opened the third time, I took a deep cleansing breath and read, For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore, it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’ (Ephesians 5:8-14).
This time I did throw the glowing book across the room with a loud curse. Minutes later, I went to bed as angry as I had been in years. I wouldn’t admit it to myself, but I felt majorly condemned as by a prosecuting attorney during a murder trial.
I dreamt a lot that night—not surprising when my deepest emotions had been ripped open hours earlier.
I had a repetitive dream of walking down a very long dark hallway toward a closed door that had bright light radiating from all around it. Every time I reached the door and dared to turn the knob, I found it locked. I could not enter. I was shut out. I hung my head and walked away. The light was not meant for me, I reasoned.
Strangely, when I awoke the next morning to the customary gloom, I knew. I just knew. I knew that my low-grade anxiety that perpetually coursed through the subconscious channel in my soul spoke of fear and hunger. Deep down inside, I was afraid that something good wouldn’t happen to me, not that something bad would happen. And my hunger was not about desiring to detach from my anxiety but about filling my empty heart with something.
My anxiety had been speaking of my emptiness for years, but I had focused on accepting it with nonjudgment and letting it drift past me like wispy clouds to be ignored. Now I knew that the clouds were a signpost pointing to my fear of emptiness and my hunger to fill it with something or, better yet, with Someone.
Even before I ate breakfast, I walked to my workplace by the feeble light of my pen flashlight and found my coworker. In response to my urging, the glowing one read one verse to me: God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13).
Then and there, I quite impulsively abandoned my commitment to naturalism and spoke to the beloved Son (I was so bone-tired of the emptiness and the anxiety). I asked Him to forgive my sins, to deliver me from my eternal darkness, and to become the light of my world.
I was extremely disappointed when nothing changed in my abracadabra moment. My coworker told me not to worry, that God had heard my prayer and that the light had already entered my heart in the person of the Holy Spirit. The glowing one then spoke words I would never forget: “You and I are both now children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom we shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).
Quick to pessimism, I did not believe what I was told. I fell into a mineshaft of anxiety and cried out to God to strike me dead. I returned to my house thoroughly depressed, a picture of despair.
It was not until I was walking down the street one morning a week later that I noticed it. In my utter disregard for my life, I had forgotten my flashlight at home but was somehow still able to see the road before me quite easily. What was going on?
In an instant I knew. Breaking my life-long habit of staring down at things, I lifted my eyes and observed with amazement that the distant horizon appeared different than I had ever seen it before. A strange, huge orb was rising above it, penetrating the eternal daytime gloom with its brilliant rays.
But not only did I see the giant sphere climbing into the sky. By its light, I saw everything else in my world. I saw the rolling hills on the horizon clearly for the first time. I saw the fine features of people’s faces as they walked by me with their headlamps and flashlights. Maybe most amazing of all, I saw all the colors around me vividly awakened by the new light.
I had been born into a different world. No, it was the same world, but everything looked different: bright, alive, amazing!
The Light of the world had entered my world, both inside and out. Not only was I seeing everything around me in a new light, but I was also sensing light within me. In its illumination, I was seeing myself in a new way as well. I felt like a new creation.
Suddenly, I broke into a sprint. I ran down the street broken arm and all. Never had I run so fast. Come to think of it, I don’t think I had ever run before. I was too afraid of tripping over things in the poor light—like protruding cobblestones and . . . dogs.
I ran past the drab ones with their headlamps and flashlights. I was not surprised to see that their shadowed faces communicated severe distaste for me. I knew what they were thinking. How could I be running when to even walk at a slow pace was dangerous in the daytime gloom. Their version of the world was viewed through the weakest of light while I saw my version through brilliant radiance.
Several times during my headlong dash, I encountered other glowing ones (I had noticed by now that I was glowing as well, but also that all of us glowing ones were dimming as the huge orange star or planet rose higher in the sky). I waved at them and shouted and slapped them on the back or high-fived them as I ran past.
They seemed to know what had happened to me. They smiled and laughed. One of them even shouted, “Welcome to the family!”
I ran for an hour, drinking up my bright surroundings and savoring the joy within me.
When I finally arrived at my new house (actually the same old house that now looked fresh and alive, bathed as it was in the light of the massive orb), I stumbled in the door and collapsed onto my couch. Too tired to even take a drink of water, I gazed around at the brightness in the room and laughed. I think I was still laughing when I fell asleep.
That day was the beginning of my new life. Everything changed for me from that point onward. I later learned that there was a new person now living within me who desired to be with other glowing ones and who wanted to love the drab ones toward the light.
So excited to have been awakened by the Light of the world, I went out of my way to tell my gloom-bound friends about Jesus. Most of them found me overzealous and obnoxious. A handful listened to me. Two of them were called out of darkness and into His marvelous light just as I had been. What great joy!
In addition to loving everyone I met, I read the words of the glowing book every day as if they were food for my starving soul. And so they were.
My life felt like heaven on earth.
Several years passed. My first love faded a bit—more than I wished, although I still loved how much more clearly I continued to see the world and myself. I kept growing in the light but discovered that some of the old darkness still resided within me. A war raged inside my soul between the part that loved the light and the part that still loved to stray into the darkness.
Life settled into a routine: good but quiet; restful but sometimes mundane; predictable but lacking adventure. I imagined that if I was a ship at sea, I was in the doldrums and the winds of joy had grown calm. Something didn’t seem right to me. Life was too smooth and . . . lifeless.
The cares of this world began to capture my attention too easily as did the temptations that whispered in my ears. My time in the glowing book grew less and less as I became distracted by other things, most of which were not from the darkness but some neutral place between the light and the dark. Their neutrality rendered them more dangerous.
One day I sought out and spoke with my friend who had introduced me to Jesus and His word. My coworker told me that the currents of life had slowly steered me into the backwaters of complacency, the place where many believers end up if they’re not wise.
This beloved friend also warned me that the currents that had taken me away from Jesus were not mere happenstance. My sibling in the Lord explained to me that since the Prince of Darkness could no longer own the glowing ones since they now belonged to a new Master, His only strategy was to distract them from the Light.
Some of Satan’s undermining strategies were earthly busyness that lured believers away from eternal living, unexpected suffering that undermined their trust in God, and even peaceful, comfortable lives that lulled them into a weakened state much like before their awakening. In some cases, the light of the glowing ones would fade so much that eventually they would need flashlights again to find their way through the world.
“What am I to do?” I cried. “I will do anything to avoid being a flashlight carrier again.”
My friend told me to go home and practice God’s presence, to read from the glowing book until God gave me the answer. “Begin with Jeremiah 29 where God says, You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
I listened to my friend who had never failed me yet. I went directly to my house and retreated to the small patio behind my house where I sat down and opened God’s word. Even before I began to read, I noticed with dread that the world around me had grown much darker since the day I had entered the kingdom of light. Driven by desperation, I began to seek God with all my heart.
I read for hours. Then days. I called in sick to work for the whole week. I kept seeking and knocking and asking. When I did not hear from God, I kept reading. I was not going to give up. I had heard talk of the importance of perseverance in one’s walk with Jesus.
On the seventh day, God’s message came to me in such an odd way. I was reading through the New Testament for the third time when I encountered words that were quite familiar to me: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3).
I stopped reading. Seek and set my mind on the things that are above, I said aloud. I repeated the words several times until I heard a voice in my mind say, Look up.
Immediately, I got up from my chair on the secluded patio and walked out into my backyard. Then, I looked up. Even as I raised my head toward the sky, I realized that I had never looked up before. At least not that far. I had looked up from the dark streets several years ago when the strange orb rose into the sky and the illumination glowed in my heart. But I had never looked way up toward the heavens. When I did, I was shocked.
From the roof of my house, a cylindrical tower ascended. It was not simply a story or two. It appeared to touch the sky. Astounded, I fell to my knees and stared at it for a full minute. I had never seen the tower before. Its existence seemed unthinkable to me.
When I finally got to my feet, I knew what I had to do. Without any planning or preparation, I searched my house for the hidden access to the tower. It took a few hours, but I finally located a spiral stairway hidden in the oversized attic chimney. It was only then that I realized how odd it was to have a chimney in the house when there was no fireplace.
Little did I know that I would never return to my house. The next 57 years of my life would be lived in that tower.
I began the climb thinking it might take me ten minutes to reach the top of the tower. However, three days later, I was still climbing. Every time I looked up from climbing the stairs, the top looked farther and farther away.
Years went by. As I continued to climb, I was joined by a spouse, then five children, then their spouses, and finally, fifteen grandchildren. It was quite a parade. And that is not even mentioning the other family members, namely, the glowing brothers and sisters who appeared out of nowhere and climbed the staircase with us.
At one point, there were hundreds of us—maybe even thousands. I knew them all. Most of the time in those early years, the climb was very pleasant and filled with camaraderie.
The ascent was made enjoyable by three other blessings beyond the beloved people who began to accompany me at different points in my upward journey.
First, I was overjoyed by the word of God that comforted me and instructed me along the way. Day and night, I mined precious nuggets from the word that energized and comforted my heart.
Secondly, at regular intervals I (we) arrived at rooms that extended out from the tower where food and lodging created times of rest. During these times, fellowship with the others was especially sweet.
Thirdly, after the first two years of ascent, one side of the brick-and-mortar tower became glass. I no longer felt like I was confined in a smokestack but sensed that the world had opened up to me. I could gaze across the countryside for miles—at least during the daylight hours. When I continued my ascent late into the night, which I often did, the glow from my body and those with me was more than sufficient light to see the steps.
These three blessings proved to be essential for me because the higher I climbed, the more I ran into . . . challenges. Periods of suffering. Times of darkness when there was no daylight outside the tower for days or weeks at a time. Even seasons when everyone left me, and I climbed alone. Except for Him. It was during these times of suffering, darkness and aloneness when I sensed God’s presence the closest to me.
It was also during these difficult parts of the ascent that I pursued God the most through the word, prayer and worship. Worshipping Him through music was especially powerful for my soul. It always felt like a cup of cold water in the desert.
The most amazing awareness I had as I continued to climb was that I was beginning to not just believe in Jesus but to trust Him at increasingly deep levels.
Five years into the climb, I realized that though I had believed in Jesus, I had not yet let go of my self-sufficiency. During a long period of loneliness, Jesus gave me words that Paul recorded when he was experiencing great affliction: For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.
So it came about that I began to trust God with my future instead of relying on my own navigation abilities. I was slowly surrendering my self-sufficiency and relying on Him.
After ten years, I trusted Jesus with my finances and my material belongings because God had proven over and over that He would provide for me. One day, He spoke to me and said, Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Not many days later, He told me that those who know your name put their trust in you.
After twenty years of laboring up the spiral staircase (by now my spouse had joined me along with my five children), God asked me to trust Him with the safety of my loved ones. How I wanted to hold on to them and protect them myself. I was so controlling. But I obeyed Him and released my grip on them, surrendering them into His hands.
Thirty years after I began the climb, I entered a terrible season of unexpected loss and grieving. I struggled with the dissonance that came as I attempted to reconcile the death of someone I loved deeply with the goodness of God.
After weeks of white-hot anger followed by several months of detachment from Him, I opened my heart to Jesus once again and was soon overwhelmed by His comfort and love. God’s Spirit reminded me of the truth of eternal life and so I remembered that I would see my loved one again. I thanked the Father for raising His Son from the grave, paving the way for all of us to experience the resurrection of the dead.
Forty years into my journey, I experienced a health crisis and feared that I would die. I wrestled with my old anxiety for several weeks before God penetrated the wall of my fearing place and reminded me that He would walk me through the rivers and through the fires. I would never be alone. If I lived, I would be with my earthly loved ones. If I died, I would go home to be with Him.
I will never forget the day one of my fellow climbers told me, “You are invincible until God calls you home.” I was no longer afraid after that. A month later, I fully recovered from my illness.
I reached the apex of the glass tower in the winter of the 57th year—in the middle of a dark night.
When I took the final step and at long last attained the top of the tower, the first thing I noticed was that at this level the whole tower was made of glass. So it was that I saw the view to the west that had been hidden from me for the entire 57-year climb. Less than a mile away, I was shocked to see in the darkness of the night a vast ocean that bore on its tempestuous back many boats and ships.
The only reason I was able to see the ocean and the vessels in the inky darkness of the night was that here, originating in the pinnacle of the tower, was a powerful, concentrated beam of light that traveled through a series of prisms and then shot out into the dark night for a great distance.
Little did I know that I had been ascending the steps of a massive lighthouse for almost six decades!
Oddly, the last thing I noticed was Him. As soon as He stepped out from behind the light mechanism in the top of the tower, I knew it was Jesus. He was smiling at me and nodding his head slowly. I collapsed awkwardly to my knees since somewhere during the climb up the tall tower, I had become an old man. Jesus lifted me back to my feet and embraced me. I wept—for joy. No words found their way out of my mouth.
After I had recovered a bit, Jesus said to me, “My son, you who once stumbled around in darkness with only the dim beam of a flashlight to light your way have now grown into a lighthouse over the last sixty years.
“Apart from me, your three-inch-wide flashlight travelled a distance of only ten feet. Now the glory of God within you travels two-hundred miles out to sea with a beam a mile wide. My Spirit within you has shone through you into the darkness of the world and directed many men and women away from shipwreck and into my haven. You are only aware of a few of these lost sheep.”
Still too stunned and overcome with joy to speak, I smiled through my tears and bowed my head to the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
He then said to me, “I did not design you to be a flashlight. I created you to be a glorious lighthouse. And so, in me, you have become just that.”
Only then did I notice that Jesus and I were the only ones standing in the apex of the tower. Looking around the small room, I opened my mouth to speak. Jesus spoke first.
“My faithful servant, you have run the race,” He said with His hand on my shoulder. “You have climbed the tower of life that was so full of suffering and of glory. Now that your faith has become sight, it is time for you to enter into the joy of your Master.”
At that moment, as His eyes gazed into mine, I did not turn to look down the stairs for my children. I did not even bother to say goodbye to them or any of my fellow climbers. I was in the Presence of the One who had saved me from the darkness of the lower world on that day so many years ago. How could my eyes seek out anything else but the breathtaking Face that illuminates all of heaven?
I exhaled my last breath as my body lay on the hospice bed.
Then I opened my eyes and everything was light.
**
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy ~ 1 Peter 2:9, 10