Chiaroscuro

I’ve been praying for light lately.  Light that reveals truth.  Light that gives direction. Light that chases away darkness.  I’ve been praying that we would recognize His light, that we would be drawn to it, comforted by it, changed in it and inspired to shine it regardless of the darkness we might find ourselves in.

I’ve been praying that God would speak four words over so many lives.  Four words that He spoke at the beginning of time … “Let there be light!”

Maybe this prayer has seemed so relevant because so much around me seems dark lately.  The struggles people are faced with as well as the world we live in.  It just seems dark.   Doesn’t it?  Or is it just me?  It could just be me.  After all, God has been teaching me a basic truth about light over the last few years.   I’ve learned that we don’t really see the beauty or truth of light without experiencing some darkness.  Not that I have enjoyed it, but seeing and walking through darkness, even in the smallest way, has only magnified God’s light.

Chiaroscuro is an Italian term that roughly means “light and dark”. It’s an art term that describes a method of using light and dark paint to accentuate the volume, mass, details and contrasts of a subject.  At times, the contrast of light and dark can become more important than the object being painted and can actually become the subject itself.

That’s what I’ve decided.

No matter what circumstance or topic, the comparison between God’s light and evils’ darkness is literaly night and day. Experiencing God’s light only heightens the utter void of walking in the dark once more.  And, experiencing the dark side of my own humanity only heightens the miraculous glory of experiencing God’s gracious light.  Once my heart sees the magnitude of how both effect people and our world and the detail of light’s beauty and darkness’s sorrow – my relationship with God changes. My relationship with others changes. Gratitude wells up from the depths of a soul that is grateful for being “brought out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.”  Worship ceases to be something I do out of habit on Sunday mornings and becomes how I live every moment of my life.  Singing songs takes on a new sincerity and passion with every word that I can then relate to.  Reading scripture becomes a treasure hunt for truths that will shine more light into my life and, consequently, into my world.

There have been moments in the past when I sang words that I didn’t understand.  I hadn’t experienced the freedom, forgiveness, love or closeness to Christ that I was singing about and I wondered if my hollow words were normal.  There were times when I read passages and thought to myself, “Does this kind of relationship with God really happen?  Or, is what I know all there is?”

I’m convinced that many people in our churches feel similar things.

For me, the enemy had lulled me into thinking I knew what the light of God was when I really had no clue. It was as if I’d been sitting in a dark wooded area at night with a little match lighting my surroundings and no idea of what the sun would do when it rose over the horizon. The match gave me some light, and it was good, but it was a tiny bit of what was available.

There’s no limit to God’s light.  It’s magnificent.  It’s life giving.  Darkness can not exist in it. There’s more light than we can experience or comprehend and God offers it freely.

The question is, do we want it? How badly?  Do you, as a child of God, want to know more of His light than you already know?  Even if it means you see the darkness more clearly?

Then ask our Father of Light to reveal more of himself to you. Ask Him to speak those words into your life in a new and deeper way than you’ve ever known.

“Let there be light!”

And keep asking until you feel the sun coming up over the horizon and shining on your face.  Until you look back at what you didn’t even know was darkness only to praise His great faithfulness for making you new every morning and for opening your eyes to more of who He is. To more of His light.