The other day, the first post on my Instagram feed was the image of a beautiful family. Naturally, I expected the caption to be about something good, but instead condolences were expressed on the death of one of the celebrities in the picture. As I scrolled, I noticed that a number of people were posting about this person. A quick google search yielded further information that the death had been a suicide. While I struggled to reconcile the hopelessness involved with suicide to the brightness of the moments caught on camera in many of the posts I saw about this celebrity, I understood that this is reality for many of us. We are bombarded with information and images that suggest we are drowning in darkness, but Jesus died and was resurrected to bring us into God’s Kingdom of light. For me, a daily shift is involved in adjusting my focus away from darkness toward light to experience this goodness. It’s a temptation to sink into darkness, or to believe it can overtake me but God calls us light and light eradicates darkness.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 5:16
We often miss the mark in expecting these good works to manifest out of our own strength and effort. In fact, our fruitfulness in every good work is powered by God. Our redemption through the blood of Jesus has given us a new status of righteousness which translates us to a kingdom of light. Because we belong to this kingdom, we are able to shine light in a dark world and bring glory to God. We are also able to receive this light for ourselves, interacting with our world in the truth of who God says we are and doing the things that please Him. As we work in unity with God’s purposes for us, we find joy, peace and satisfaction.
Giving thanks to the Father which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:12-14
God has taken me out of darkness into His marvelous light (1Peter 2:9), to minister this light as a royal priesthood from a holy nation. As I function from this position, I can expect the darkness in the world to draw back from me, knowing that God has an answer for all our longing and existential angst. This informs my response to the dark hopelessness I see in the world. All speculation on my part about what could have motivated the celebrity in my Instagram feed to leave such a beautiful family missed the mark, except the conviction that a lack of hope in a tomorrow that could be better was missing somewhere. As believers and disciples of Jesus Christ, we can’t fail to let the world know that God’s love is so great that He offers new mercy every single day and no one need stay in darkness.