Battling the Dark

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Wednesday, January 4, 2017

One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian.  He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God.  There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush.  Moses stared in amazement.  Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up.  “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself.  “Why isn’t that bush burning up?  I must go see it.”  When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”  “Here I am!” Moses replied.  “Do not come any closer,” the Lord warned.  “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.  Exodus 3:1-5^(NLT)

Moses was drawn to the fire of God like a moth to a bulb on a Savannah night.  Not so for my friend Paul, who told me a story about his youthful battle against the darkness.  As a young man Paul didn’t own a car, so after night-fall he was walking home along Little Beane Store Road.  It was so dark the only way he could be positive he was still following the road was to feel the rough places at the roadside under his bare feet.  At one point he fell because he’d stepped on something that felt slick and rope-like.  Fearing the worst he jumped up and stomped the unknown dark, slithering evil several times, and then ran home like the wind. 

In the morning Paul returned to the battlefield to see exactly what he’d killed.  When he got to the spot of the nighttime struggle he discovered his vanquished foe in the grass beside the road – one very mangled corn stalk!

Battling the unknown is a metaphor for coming to terms with the fear we have because of the darkness around and within us.  Paul’s youthful fear imagined a reptile laying in wait for him on that summer night.  Living in rural North Carolina with corn, greens, and food growing everywhere, the reality of snakes on the hunt for a meal became larger because of the eerie feeling you get walking alone in the dark.

Moses had his own battle with the darkness, coming to terms with the fact that he really wasn’t an Egyptian prince; that was just what people thought.  Moses had to contend with his real DNA – he was a Hebrew, and the God of the slaves was his God.  Talk about stepping on a snake in the dark.

But then the God of Abraham’s flock called to Moses from a bush that was on fire, but wouldn’t burn down.  Moses was drawn to the fire, curious and unafraid.  But that was before God spoke – this is holy ground, take off your shoes!  It is my firm belief that one sentence is where Moses developed his stutter!

To his credit, Moses didn’t run from God like my friend Paul ran from the snake.  (Had it been me that night, I’d still be running!)  But Moses’ encounter was with the light of a burning bush; that’s different than running from a snake in the night.  The real fight for Moses that day was not the light, but the darkness within.  Moses had to deal with the fear that this God who does everything in the light might consume him because of the darkness inside Moses.  After all, when light comes, darkness has to go!

That’s the real fear most people have when it comes to drawing near God.  After all, we know what fire does…it burns and provides light.  We humans are most-burnable and we have this darkness within that is comfortably entrenched.  We fear light, and we sense that we ought to, because we understand the difference between God and us:

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.  1 John 1:5^(NLT)

This is why we venerate Moses; despite his own darkness he went towards the light.  And that is how to battle the dark!

For You Today

When, in your times of meditation on God’s Word, you stumble across something quite dark within yourself, don’t just do battle and run home; run to the light!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: Gebhard Fugel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

John Wesley; Homo Unius Libri

[1]   

Monday, April 13, 2015

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you:  God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.  1 John 1:5 (NLT)

John Wesley, in the preface to his published sermons declared himself homo unius libri, a man of ONE book:

TO candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart.  I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air.  I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity!  I want to know one thing,—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore.  God himself has condescended to teach me the way.  For this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book.  O give me that book!  At any price, give me the book of God!  I have it:  here is knowledge enough for me.  Let me be homo unius libri. [2]

Contemporaries of Wesley (as well as later and modern critics) used the term in a derogatory way as if to say a person of one book was somewhat limited in knowledge, understanding or ideas.[3]  Wesley used it to underscore the importance of Scripture.

Along with Wesley I hold what is generally called a high view of Scripture, that it contains nothing false, only the truth of God.  I’m not a John Wesley scholar, but I believe he got this view from a common friend of ours, Paul, who wrote to Timothy:

You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.  It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.  God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. 

2 Timothy 3:15-17 (NLT)

It was common for the “learned elite” of Wesley’s day to look down on common people.  And for those preachers who went to the common people, with the simple message of the Gospel, a homo unius libri evangelism, it was seen as something of a wasted life.  

Scripture would disagree with that.

The teaching of your word gives light, so even the simple can understand. 

Psalm 119:130 (NLT)

What I would suggest, based on history and (mostly) on Scripture itself, is that when a person places more faith in any thought or belief system humanity has created (science, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, and so on…), than in the One who gave the Word from above, that person probably hasn’t read Scripture; worse, not even as intellectually-honest as a simple person, that one has read it, and denied what is plain truth.

Call me a Bible-thumper or whatever term fits your unbelief; like Martin Luther, here I stand, God help me, I can do no other; the Bible is God’s Word.

My only real problem with God’s Word isn’t a lack belief – I believe it to the depths of my soul, that it is true and without any error; my biggest problem with the Word of God is Russell not being as obedient to the revealed Word of God as he should be.

For You Today

If you’ve settled in your heart that God has truly given us all we need for salvation and training in righteousness in the Holy Scriptures, you’ve taken one of two steps that place you in right relationship with God.  The other step throughout your entire life is to do what that book says.

Let’s be homo unius libri, a people of one book, AND a people of one obedience to what the book has told us to do.

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[1] Title Image: Photograph by Mike Peel, via Wikimedia Commons

[2] John Wesley in the Preface to Sermons (quoted by Henry Craik in A Man of One Book, 1916) Bartleby.com

[3] Various sources reported in Wikipedia.com

Black Ice

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

“Black ice” is a term that terrifies most sane drivers.  It is what happens to roads when the sun has melted snow or ice during the day, and then re-freezes, when the temperature drops at night.  It still looks like the road is wet – but it is a treacherous sheet of thin ice.  It looks like the black asphalt road, but only because the ice is so clear.

My uncle was a truck driver and used to tell the story of how he was travelling the Jersey Turnpike one night.  It was frigid and he’d been on the road too long; he just wanted to be home.  The conditions were clear, but the roads were “wet”, so he was taking it easy. 

He noticed another truck attempting to pass him on his right, and thought, What a bozo, trying to pass me in this mess!   Then, my uncle saw that the “bozo” was the tail end of his own tractor-trailer.  The roads were so slippery, covered with black ice, that the trailer had shifted and “jack-knifed”.  He was trying to pass himself.

Black ice isn’t what it looks like, and that can be deadly! 

Spiritually-speaking, believing the lie that you can handle life on your own can also be deadly.  Often life isn’t what it looks like; you need a “spiritual black-ice detector”. 

Today…for YOU

God is true light.  Have you hit any dark patches recently?  Ask Him to show you the way.