|
“Praise the Lord! Happy are those who fear the Lord, who greatly delight in his commandments … They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright; they are gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with those who deal generously and lend,
who conduct their affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; they will be remembered forever. They are not afraid of evil tidings; their hearts are firm, secure in the Lord. Their hearts are steady, they will not be afraid…” –– Psalm 112:1, 4-8
In the dark of a morning run, when I look up (a brief glance, lest I fall), I may see the moon, boastful in brightness before the city wakens. I may see a constellation, or perhaps a few isolated stars seemingly uninterested in group gatherings. I may see a planet, or could it be the International Space Station? However, here in Charlotte I most certainly will see a parade of neatly spaced lights slowly navigating their way to a runway at Charlotte Douglas Airport. Were it not for the corresponding low rumble of powerful gas turbine engines it would appear as a string of accent light strung across the night’s back porch. Once the sun rises and hovers at its highest with its eye-squinching intensity, those stars, planets, and planes, or perhaps their siblings, remain up there emitting or refracting their light, though we can no longer see them, leaving us blinded by the light from seeing the lights.
What a curious phenomenon light remains. Having read Anthony Doerr’s masterpiece, All the Light We Cannot See, and having watched the film adaptation, I am intrigued by the light we see and don’t see, often simultaneously. In Doerr’s novel, highlighting the survival of youth and kindness amidst the madness of WWII, the main character, Marie-Laure, perhaps sees the world more clearly than anyone in spite of the fact that she is blind. Doerr approaches light more as mystery than as science settled and wrapped for delivery. The Professor (Etienne), in a radio broadcast enchanting children across the boundaries fought over in WWII, asks, “What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.” The Professor expands the mystery to the children’s fascination, “The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children … It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
They say that seeing is believing, but how do we understand, interpret, or assimilate the light we see? Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Through the eyes or the light of Christ we can begin to distinguish between real and unreal, truth and illusion; we can begin to see the good in that which before we had only seen bad; we can begin to peer through the shroud of this world’s darkness and perceive hints of the light of eternity; we can begin to be the people God created us to be. The Psalmist says, “They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright; they are gracious, merciful, and righteous.” Through the eyes of Christ we are no longer surprised to find that a blind youth has near perfect vision.
| 
