Driving Into the Light

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This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. I John 1:5-7

When I get to Heaven I expect many surprises. I get more than most that there are things about Christianity that just don’t make sense within the current context of a fallen sinful world. We have never known anything but this so how could we expect ourselves to understand something that is totally other than this?

For instance: How do we work out the concept of eternity (the absence of time) in a universe that measures everything in time. How do we rationalize having complete free choice under the auspices of a completely sovereign God? How can innocence ever return when the knowledge of good and evil is so deeply ingrained within our race? AND how can  Something or Someone be entirely light in a universe that is only able to measure light by the amount of darkness it dispels?

We cannot fully explain these things now but we Christians must firmly hold to them because God has taught them in His Word.

As Amanda and I mosied from Moher along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, we traveled into a place called the Burren.

A veritable moonscape splattered along the Western coast of Ireland, the Burren is the badlands between the green spaces of Kerry and Connemara. Amanda and I were struck to silent wonder as we twisted the corkscrew roads down into the nothingness and back up and out again towards the bay of Galway. Always in our travels there was this light in the midst of the lonely terrain that reminded us that magic and mystery can exist side by side with the natural man.

100_5388The sun was setting over the Bay of Galway as we pulled into the SaltHill Hotel along Ocean Dr. As it nestled itself to sleep under a haze of dark black cloud I was reminded that I may not know how time and eternity, sovereignty and free will, innocence and knowledge, or light and darkness can exist perfectly side by side, but there are a great many things I do not know or have not seen; My not knowing them or not seeing them does not make them any less so.

What parts of God’s Word do you struggle with because it doesn’t seem to match up with what you have experienced?

4 thoughts on “Driving Into the Light

  1. These photos are amazing, Pastor J! Sometimes I struggle with just how much my Father in heaven loves me because I never experienced a father’s love. I am grateful for uncles who stepped in and tried to fill that void of growing up without a father.

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