IN THE DARK?

By Shirley Wiggins

“I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, …"           Isaiah 45:3a

What can you see in the dark?

It has been said that the choicest pieces of lace were spun in the famous lace shops of Brussels in weaving rooms lit only by the light falling through one very small window:    … “Lace is always more delicately and beautifully woven when the worker himself is in the dark and only his pattern is in the light.”¹

Compelled to write --- So often I write “in the dark.”  I think I am chronicling one story and when it is finished, I realize all those fragments of thoughts drawn from various Scripture verses that stood out to me actually tied together in a cohesive reasonable line of thought --- a “train of thought” which seemed to me to be going nowhere in particular.

I have often felt like one who works in the dark, “waking” to see the picture that was put together like a puzzle and it actually fit in place and was “complete” – even though I couldn’t see how it would!

“Sometimes it is very dark.  We cannot understand what we are doing.  We do not see the web we are weaving.  We are not able to discover any beauty, any possible good in our experience.  Yet if we are faithful and fail not and faint not, we shall someday know that the most exquisite work of all our life was done in those days when it was so dark.

If you are in the shadows because of some strange mysterious providence, do not be afraid.  Simply go on in faith and love, never doubting.  God is watching, and He will bring good and beauty out of all your pain and tears.” ---J.R. Miller¹

“The shuttles of His purpose move

To carry out His own design;

Seek not too soon to disapprove

His work, nor yet assign

Dark motives, when, with silent tread,

You view some somber fold;

For lo, within each darker thread

There twines a thread of gold.

Spin cheerfully,

Not tearfully,

He knows the way you plod;

Spin carefully,

Spin prayerfully,

But leave the thread with God.”

--------Canadian Home Journal.¹

“Leave the thread with God.”

But, which God?

Though there is really and truly only One God the world says there are either none – no God at all – or, there are many and each one of us may design our own god.  See Isaiah 44:1-21, 22-45:25, and Isaiah 46:1-13.

You must know the true God!  You absolutely must,  your soul’s destiny depends on it!!  Life is not over at physical death – the grave is only a temporary tomb.  Life is forever – a gift from the Eternal God – see Isaiah 46:3-13.

God carries His people – from before their birth, carrying them from the womb even to old age and gray hair.  He made and He will bear and carry and save His people. 

People who choose to design their own god, or worship the figment of someone else’s imagination, must “carry” the wooden, ceramic, or stone god of their own making which has absolutely no life in it, but it robs them of their own life!  See Isaiah 45:20-22, 23-25.

Look to Him and be saved – and secure:  “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!  For I am God, and there is no other.”  Isaiah 45:22 (ESV).

There is no other way:  “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” John 14:6 (ESV).

Darkness and Light…     When the first lie slithered into the life of the first man and the first woman, the darkness of sin entered the world.  See Genesis 3.

“…Light in the spiritual sense represents the truth, clarity, spiritual understanding, and discernment we receive from God’s Word.”  --- Anne Graham Lotz.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. … The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made through  Him, yet the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.  But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  John 1:1-5, 9-14 (ESV).²

Have you received the Light of the Lord into your life?  Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.

 

¹Streams in the Desert  Compiled by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman,  Copyright 1965 Cowman Publications, Inc.; pages 356-357.

² To be a child of God, the Bible teaches that you must first have a relationship with Jesus Christ. 

John 3:16-18 (ESV):    “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.  Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”