don't let your eyes adjust

We have been called from darkness into marvelous light.

It's good to remember the darkness from which we were called in order to remember the glory of Christ in which we stand. Don't hide from it--we are called to live in the world.

Open your eyes to the darkness, allow yourself to feel the weight of the brokenness. See the prisoners in maximum security who resort to cutting themselves and mutilating their flesh in order to remind themselves that they still exist. Let your heart be burdened by the injustice of immigrants who are arrested and brutally beaten and abused by arrogant, angry people. Step into the lives of immigrants who work long hours and never see the light of day in order that their family might know freedom in America. Open your heart to the thousands of adults and children being faced with death because of a disease whose name they don't even know. Slow down and walk beside the older adults who live alone because everyone they know has either died or forgotten that they are alive. Spread out your arms to embrace the orphans, weep with the widows.

Let the Lord remind you of your own adoption. Your own redemption. Let Him draw you back to the time when you were an orphan yourself--forgotten and hopeless.

Open your eyes to the darkness, allow yourself to feel the weight of the brokenness. Remember the darkness from which you were called, and go back into it. But don't go grasping at the air and groping along the ground as if you still cannot see. Enter boldly, shining your light into the darkness where you used to live. We are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. We are preserving a world which is rotting away. We are bringing clarity and glorious life to a lost and dying world.

Let us go confidently in Christ. Let us bring light of the hope of life into the darkness of death. Let's be Christ's true ambassadors.

Death is strong, but Christ has overcome the grave. His work is finished. Hallelujah and Amen!