“The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light. To those living in the Shadow of Death, a LIGHT has come” Matthew 4:16.
Our world is filled with darkness. War. Famine. Epidemics. Cancer. Even the Christmas story includes Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents,” a massacre so heinous that for centuries Herod was named by anyone looking to convey a sense of outrageous evil. (It took Hitler’s genocidal murder of millions to unseat Herod as the go-to example of pure evil. “Worse than Herod,” has been replaced with “worse than Hitler.”)
There has never been a person whose life was not touched by darkness. The luckiest people will still have to plan their parents’ funerals—and possibly their own.
We live in a world deeply stained by evil. And it hurts so much—every hurt we suffer can be traced back to some aspect of the Fall of Creation, to the Darkness that was unleashed on the world, like Roman “Dogs of War,” unleashed in battle to destroy enemy troops: darkness chases you like a giant, vicious dog.
And God is SOVEREIGN. He uses the darkness to draw us to Him:
“And Jesus answering said unto them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’” Luke 5:31-32.
You see, God uses darkness—illness—to draw our hearts to the GREAT PHYSICIAN. Have you suffered pain? Have you been lost, without direction? Have you faced the blindness of total darkness? Turn to the LIGHT OF THE WORLD. Take your sickness to the Great Physician. Take your fears, self-doubts, and questions to the WONDERFUL COUNSELOR.
Don’t let darkness destroy you. Let it drive you to your KNEES. Take it to Jesus. He loves you!
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