Series: Blessed Be
Psalm 112:4 ESV
It’s always been a conundrum to me that metaphorically darkness comes before the dawn.
It almost seems like ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’.
That may seem strange, but it’s the same kind of confusion.
Darkness is confusion.
In the darkness nothing makes sense.
You don’t know how you got to the dark place and you don’t know how to get out.
It’s frightening.
Every way you turn you look for some ray of light but it doesn’t come. After a while you feel like you’ll be in the darkness forever. I mean, it’s hard to believe there is a way out if you can’t see anything.
You try to remember what God told you. Weren’t there promises?
But soon the darkness overtakes you and you start to believe you’ve been forgotten. You wonder if the light will ever come.
It seems so strange to you that others around you walk in the light. They have never been in the darkness and you can tell they are wondering what you did to deserve being in the dark.
Then, you begin to wonder what you did to deserve being in the dark.
Eventually when you are in the darkness for a long time you begin to get used to the dark. There are moments you even feel comfortable in the dark.
But then one day you wake up and off in the distance you see a pinhole and a microscopic ray of light is shining through that tiny hole.
It had been so long since you’d seen the light that you think maybe it’s just an illusion. Because you aren’t sure if the light is real and you aren’t sure it will still be there when you wake up tomorrow.
Watching for the light is almost as uncertain and scary that living in the darkness.
You remember that Psalm 112:4 tells us, “Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.”
You’ve read that before but when you read it you didn’t think you would ever be the one who lived in the dark.
You thought that referred to people who deserved to be in the darkness.
You thought because you’d always followed God you would always be in the light. You didn’t think you would suffer confusion.
You are the kind of person who had always tried to follow God and do the right thing. Even other people told you they thought you set a good example for them. They told you they wanted to be more like you.
As you sit in the dark you remember the good days before the darkness came. You remember the light. So was the tiny ray of light you saw real, or was it an illusion?
You do remember there was a small ray of light.
Then one day someone at work said something funny and you laughed. You remembered how good it was to laugh. You remembered that one laugh changed you attitude. As the laughter seeped back in you started to remember a lifetime of laughter.
The laughter led you to love for your co-workers…your friends. Love and laughter opened the light and soon you could see the son-shine.
It wasn’t instant but day by day, week by week, and month by month you looked to your friends and to Jesus for healing. That gave you the courage to step inside a church building someone at work told you about. She said, “Come with me, we are all broken and looking for healing.”
At that church they had a Healing Service and you went and sat quietly in the back.
Healing didn’t come the first time you went but eventually it did come.
Between the laughter and the healing light you forged your way to a new life.
It turned out to be a good life filled with the light of Jesus.
One day much further down the road you realized that God took a very difficult (what you called bad) thing and opened the door to a life that was very good. The new life didn’t look anything like the old life, but it WAS very very good.
It started with one good laugh.
It WAS filled with the son-shine of God’s laughter, love, and healing grace!
It was and IS a blessing!
Spiritual Practice: Laughter
Take time to laugh today. It may be the best blessing (medicine) you receive…
In God, Deborah
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