Light & Darkness

"What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." So writes John the Evangelist (1.4-5) in a passage Christians read at Advent and Christmas.

What is darkness anyway? So often we personify it, making it seem alive and full of malevolent intent--something scarier, more menacing and dreadful in our augmented fears and terrifying preoccupations. But darkness is only the absence of light. Scientists can measure light, but they can't measure darkness--it has no positive qualities; it is a condition of absence, deficiency, and imperfection. It is the not-being of light.

Darkness does not overcome light, because non-being does not overcome being. The God who is known as I AM cannot not be. The Being in whom we live and move and have our being is Being itself--eternal, ever-existent. As the dark days of winter and Lent begin to wane and the brighter days of spring and Easter approach, remember that we notice the darkness that surrounds us in difficult times because it points out the absence of what we in other times take for granted, what is the source of all our joy, what we cannot live without: the light that is life of the world.