Having accompanied my son to where he was staying in Berlin with a friend for 10 days, I began my own short stay. Meticulous Frost Family planning meant we’d had an excellent journey and the next stage was straightforward too. Well, according to Google Maps it was. I confidently took the tram back in to the centre of Germany’s capital and 20 minutes later, alighted at the correct stop. So far, so good.
It was dark.
I hadn’t reckoned on that.
Setting off in the direction my inner compass told me was south (for that was the desired direction), I found the right street. Should be the next left… but it wasn’t… and so it went on… My map wasn’t detailed enough. It was too dark to read it. No GPS app on the phone. My normally reliable sense of direction had lost its way.
Twenty minutes later and it was indeed the case, dear reader, that I was lost. People I stopped were tourists too. Finding a map on another tram stop showed just how lost I was. Heading in the diagonally opposite direction from where I should be going.
Thankfully, a knight in a shining taxi came to my rescue.
We all feel lost in the dark at times. Sometimes literally but also in other ways. Insufficient training to know how to do a job. Lack of communication or clarity. Being overwhelmed by negative opinions. Following a lost leader. Worries or concerns feel different in the dark too: trebling their size (at least) and taking on a different conscious or unconscious form (not least in the middle of the night).
The streets of Berlin looked very different in the daylight, of course. And later on, I saw where I’d gone wrong. I should have looked in a different way!
Seeing things in a new light – whether literally, metaphorically, psychologically or spiritually – doesn’t always make the darkness disappear completely, but doing so does mean it’s diminished and can be looked at in a different way.
Jesus once described himself as ‘The light of the world’ – although I also like to think of him as being a ‘light for the world’. He goes on to say, ‘Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ (John 8:12)
Now, of course, there are times when we walk in darkness. But what we have here in Jesus’ words is the assurance that even in the darkest times, the presence of the light of Christ helps us to look at things in a different way. We can also be reassured by the words of the writer of John’s Gospel: ‘In him (Jesus) was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ (John 1:4-5)
It is impossible for darkness to totally extinguish a light. It is impossible for a light not to illuminate darkness.
What brings light in your darkness today? Will you focus on the darkness or use the light to look upon it in a different way?