Fr. Dave's Thoughts - February 14, 2025

‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:14-16

Dear friends,

Back in college, I took a trip with one of my classes to the Henderson Molybdenum Mine located just outside of Leadville, Colorado in a town called Climax. At the time it was the largest Molly mine in the world. Today it is an open pit mine, but back then there was a mine shaft that went two miles underground. After donning our hard hats equipped with lights, we made our way down the mine shaft. Our guide decided to stop the open elevator car we were riding in about a mile down the shaft and he invited us to turn off the lights on our hard hats. Maybe you have experienced something like this yourself, but I had never been in such utter darkness in my life. Even to this day, I have never experienced anything like it. It was disorienting and quite frightening not to be able to see anything at all. I could hear the voices of the others in my group of course, but I couldn’t see where those voices were coming from. It was a really good experience for me, but I don’t want to do it again.

In order for any of us to make our way, we need light. One thing that I have noticed about myself, since I have gotten older, is that my night vision isn’t nearly as good as it used to be. It took an especially bad turn after my Lasik surgery about 15 years ago. I remember helping my dad as he struggled in his eighties and nineties with macular degeneration. He needed a strong focused light to be able to read anything. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for the blind to do the simplest of tasks.  

Like many people, I tend to take my eyes for granted. I don’t think about light and darkness as I go through my daily routine. I just know that when it is too dark for me to see something, I simply turn on a light. One thing to notice about darkness is that the moment you turn on the light, it goes away. With the exception of the massive gravitational fields in the universe called black holes where even light cannot escape, darkness simply is not capable of overcoming light; light always wins.

In John chapter one, it speaks of Jesus as the one who was there in the beginning of creation with God the Creator. “All things came into being through him, [meaning Jesus] and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:3-5) It is very clear to the writer of John’s gospel that Jesus is the light that guides our path.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a little anxious with all that is going on in the country and in the world. Things are shifting very quickly and ultimately that may be for the best, time (and ultimately God) will be the judge of that. But in this moment it seems that there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety among the people that I talk to. When uncertainly and anxiety show up, things can begin to look pretty dark. So where is the light switch? Well, I think it is embedded in our faith. In a text from the prophet Jeremiah, the text we will have before us this Sunday and the one I am going to preach on, It says it very clearly. “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8).This is quite a text written during a time of great uncertainty among the Hebrew people. Trusting in God is not easy, I understand that. It is as hard for me as it is for you. It is hard to rely on faith and a God we cannot see when there are so many other more tangible things in our lives that we have found to be reliable. However, when the ground beneath us begins to give way and those tangible things begin to fail, there really can be no other place to look for the light that will reveal our path. Throughout the past year, in this blog, I have written a great deal about how important it is to have a rule of life. If you haven’t begun to think about it already, now is as good a time as any. As God’s people, the church is called to be the light of the world, to be the city on the hill that cannot be hid. I want Zion Church to be that light as much as I want every other church in town to be that light. So I invite you to stay encouraged and experience God’s blessing as you turn on or turn up that light switch of trust in God in your own lives. As a result, we will become the light for the community of Manchester and the people of the Northshire.

Peace,

Dave