Tag Archives: Light

Day 5: Light and Darkness

John 1:5 : The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.

The light of Jesus is shining in the darkness. The Bible says that there is darkness and Jesus is shining in it. This tells me that the world around us is not full of light. This is something that challenges our thinking as Christians. Because of the way people act around us, it’s easy to think that the world has everything together; that it has the light, but the Bible says that it is Jesus who has the light and the world has the darkness.

The world’s darkness has not been able to overcome the light that comes from the life of Jesus. When we have Jesus life in us, our light cannot be overcome by the darkness either. It is very interesting to read that it use the present tense: “That light shines…” Jesus is still alive today inside of us. The light still shines.

I think that as history, this verse is specifically talking about the fact that even though Jesus came at a very dark time in history, the evil at that time could not destroy Him or his purpose here.

The things that happened to Jesus before He was born weren’t that great. His mother and father were forced to go all the way to Bethlehem just to be counted so that they could pay taxes when they were nine months pregnant. He was forced to be born in a town that was so crowded, the guest rooms were all taken and the animal lodging place had to be used. After the baby was born Herod, their leader, became jealous when he heard that a king had been born somewhere in his region, so he ordered that all children put to death under the age of two. Joseph was warned in a dream and immediately left to Egypt. Jesus was constantly pressed by the darkness in this world and ultimately put to death by it. But even in this, he overcame. I doubt that it really was a “Silent Night” the day Jesus was born. The good part is that Jesus was shining in this dark world and nothing could stop it.

Day 4
Day 6

Day 4: A Life Light

John 1:4 : In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

According to John, there was clearly something different about Jesus. He had life in Him. It is true that when we are born we have life, but why do we automatically search for more? Something inside of us longs for more than what we get when we are born. We don’t feel like we are really living to the extent that we want to be living.

John was a witness to the fact that Jesus was really living, but there is another important aspect to this. This life had the properties of light to mankind. This is just full of meaning, most of it I don’t think I fully appreciate yet. Up to this point we have been talking about Jesus and His work during creation. It is very interesting, that the first thing that God created (other than the earth and the heavens) was light.

Light in the physical realm makes it easy to see where you are and where you are going physically. It makes sense then that light in the spiritual realm makes it easy for you to see where you are and where you are going spiritually.

Since John was clearly talking about life inside, the light he was talking about is logically an inner light or a spiritual one. Now light has a positive quality that is obvious. When the light is on you can clearly see things. This allows you to avoid problems and move quickly to places you want to go. But light also can seem like a bad thing; when you are trying to hide, darkness is preferred. When a person is ready to go into the light for its benefits and is ready to stop hiding, the light is clearly the best choice.

The life of Jesus was a light to men and not all men appreciated that fact. We will learn more about that as we move through this book.

Day 3
Day 5