the light has come

In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with God
and the Word was God...

for light shines in the darkness,
and darkness could not, cannot, and will not overpower it...

and Mary said, "Amen,"
and all the hosts of heaven proclaimed,
"Glory! Hallelujah!"

So often I do not live in this story, the story told by the Great Storyteller. The story, as Donald Miller says, that "God meant to speak before we finished his sentence." More often than not I finish God's sentence; put words in his mouth. Who knows why. I am not nearly as good a storyteller, I get pulled this way and that by the hold of darkness, simply because I give it authority that it doesn't have. As Isaac said tonight, light has shined into the darkness of my life, and for whatever reason, the darkness backs down. I forget to live in that fact, in that freedom.

Tonight as Jon was playing Who Can Ascend, I heard a familiar songline in a new way. Won't you wash my heart, Lord, deep inside me. I have always heard this and pictured God cleansing my heart from things like injustice, unrighteousness, hardness of heart, pride, complacency, hypocrisy, idolatry, shallowness, faithlessness. [Buechner, Telling the Truth] Which, I think, is true. But as I stood, arms lifted, I heard these words as a call to freedom. I pictured God washing my heart of all the scars built up by past hurts. I pictured him washing my heart of the pain of rejection, the shame of falling short, the loneliness of being misunderstood, the hollowness of self-loathing. I heard Isaiah 43:18/19 ring true in my heart:

Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

The prophet speaks words of the Great Storyteller, who is light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness backs down. The darkness has no power. God is king of glory, strong and mighty, strong almighty Lord. His strength is mightier than anything. He overcomes all darkness.

So we hear the call to freedom. He has given us the power to become children of God. [John 1] Power to not play by the rules of this world. Power to live in God's story instead of our own stories. Power to forget the past—to forget the wrong we've done; to forget the wrong done to us. Power to live as people without baggage, people who haven't been beaten down, people who haven't built walls up. Power and freedom to simply be, to live and love as those unbound by sin and pain and simple humanity.

And the angel said, "Rejoice! Rejoice! For you will bear a son."
And Mary said, "Amen."
And all the hosts of heaven proclaimed,
"Glory! Hallelujah!"

For light shines in the darkness,
and darkness could not, cannot, and will not overpower it.