"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." - John 1:5 (NIV)
Have you ever felt small and insignificant?
After days of bad storms, Amanda and I finally got to take our night tour into Dismals Canyon. The whole park is so isolated that it's literally so dark at night that you can't see your hand in front of your face. So add the effect of the canyon depths to the camp darkness, and we couldn't even begin to describe how dark it is.
But shining through the darkness are these little, tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye-even-in-the-light creatures called DISMALITES. Our sweeter-than-sweet-tea but tall-as-the-canyon's-Champion-Tree guide, Kevin, and the Dismals Canyon website describe Dismalites this way: "Past twilight the canyon lights up with tiny bioluminescent creatures we call Dismalites. These 'glowworms' require a select habitat to survive and are unique to only a few places on Earth. They are 'close cousins' of the rare glowworms found in Australia and New Zealand."
If I understood correctly, Dismalites are basically the larvae of a rare species of gnat. Again, in sum, they are tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.
But as tiny as they all may be, as small and insignificant as they all may seem, the light of just one itsy bitsy Dismalite cannot be overcome by the darkness.
Looking at a Dismalite is like looking at a little star, far, far away in a vast, dark, and never-ending universe except the Dismalite is shining through a darkness that's as close as your nose and as close as your hand that you can't see but use to keep from running into the rock in the deep dark canyon.
And no matter how deep the canyon. No matter how isolated the park. No matter how late at night. The darkness cannot overcome the light of a little, tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye-even-in-the-light Dismalite.
And that's the way it is with each and every one of our lives.
Ya see friends, when we believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter how small and insignificant we may feel. It doesn't even matter how small and insignificant we actually are. When we believe in Jesus Christ, we have the light of the world dwelling in us and shining through us. And when darkness comes to the lives of our family and friends and neighbors and coworkers, the world has nothing to say because the world is cloaked in darkness. But we who believe have a calm and a peace and a word that brings light to the deepest darkness, calm to the roughest storm, and peace to the neediest soul.
Yes, we are all small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But because of Jesus Christ, we, like a Dismalite, have the power to shine our best when things get toughest for those we're given to love.
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." - John 1:5 (NIV)
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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