God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)
And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light. (Rev. 22:5)
Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8:12)
Bathed as we usually are with light at the touch of a switch, with light at our command even in the darkest night, I rarely appreciated what these verses must have meant to people who really knew darkness. The idea of constant light seemed less than paradisiacal to me; I thought of darkness as restful, comforting, and revealing of starry splendors rendered invisible by the brightness of the day. I had been known to grumble at the intrusion of the light: our neighbor's motion-sensitive floodlight, activated by a passing cat and piercing my sleep; or a city's midnight glow that washed out my view of the stars.Hurricane Charley spoke pointedly to the fallacy of my feelings. Darkness is only comforting when light is available at need. Without light, the darkness conceals dangers, from the chair ambushing your toes to the tree limb hurtling toward your window. A harmless insect suddenly lighting on your arm evokes disproportionate terror, because you didn't see it coming, and you don't know what it is. Does the darkened bathroom conceal a snake, or perhaps encroaching floodwaters? Unrelieved darkness is the natural home of fear.
What a blessing is a flashlight, or a candle! Yet in banishing fear, they leave frustration in its place. You can't quite see. Have I washed this dish well? Did I knit that pattern right? Reading becomes more strain than pleasure. Lethargy sets in: it is easier to sleep than to strain against the dimness.
Tonight I will once again appreciate the darkness that brings a visible hush to our frantic world. But only because light is again available when I need it. It is light that makes darkness beautiful; it is light that makes darkness bearable.
Charley brought darkness, and left behind the realization that a source of dependable, unfailing light is, after all, a very good thing.
