out of darkness

I was flipping through one of my many notebooks earlier and I came across this. I don't believe I've published it anywhere before, so I thought I'd share:

October 18, 2005

I went for a drive through my city the other day. It only takes one drive around Windsor to make me want to crawl under the bed for the rest of the week. Send me out to interact with society for an evening and I come home with a good case of the shudders. The state of our world at present is neither strange (it's a natural outgrowth of man's creation-wide rebellion against God) nor unforeseen. Paul told Timothy that it was coming: that in the last days men would be scoffers, disrespectful to their parents, lovers of self rather than lovers of God.

Dare I believe that in such a time as this, God might be doing something beautiful? Does He still work light in times and places? Jesus, in His humanness and vulnerability, shines forth as the One who was completely broken by evil, and yet overcame. His life began and ended in tragedy (from the Bethlehem massacre to the cross), yet He lived with a pure and joyous love of His Father and His human brothers and sisters. He was truly a Light shining in a dark place, entirely untainted by the world around Him. For three days His light was swallowed by darkness, but in His resurrection it shot up from the ground and lit the heavens eternally. It shines now.

I didn't finish it. It certainly reflects many of the things I've been thinking and writing about, though.