As you begin 2024, let your confidence in Christ illuminate everything around you. Let his light shine and remind this dark world that Jesus is source of all joy, hope, and love.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a wistful word about the weekend.
Yep, that’s right. This weekend my husband Ken will do what he always does the first weekend of January. He’s going to get out his ladder and he’s going to take down our Christmas lights. And I don’t know, it always makes me feel a little sad when he does this. I mean, for the last month, when I drive home from work – and, as you know, it gets pretty dark rather early – every time Ken and I turn the corner on our street, we are welcomed home by those beautiful little white lights that trim the eaves all the way around our house; it looks so warm and cozy. We pull up into the driveway and we say, “Ahh, this is so beautiful. We live here, can you believe it?” It’s so homey; something so warm and wonderful about little lights in the dark.
And when you think about it, light is so connected with life, and joy, and hope. Bring just a little light into the darkness, and it sure is amazing how it illumines everything, right? Colossians 1 touches on this where it says, “[We give] thanks to the Father, who has qualified [us] to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness.” Oh, friend, we left the dominion of darkness behind us. We don’t prefer the dark; we are children of the light. And that’s a helpful thing to remember whenever I feel discouragement or depression start to dim the light in my heart.
Believe me, in this wheelchair I know what it means to live in the dark; I’ve been in it; it is awful. I remember when I first got out of the hospital years ago after my diving accident, I cannot describe to you how deep my depression was. My future looked so dark – I didn’t want to live life in a wheelchair. My sister Jay invited me to come live with her on the family farm, and there were many mornings when she would enter my bedroom to get me up and I would just turn my head on the pillow and tell her to close the drapes, turn out the lights and shut the door. I would choose to stay in bed. I would choose to lie in the darkness for hours. But you know, you can only survive in the dark for so long or else your soul will just shrivel up and die. And I remember thinking that after staying in my dark bedroom for those two weeks, it started to frighten me. I didn’t want to live, but I sure didn’t want to die, either.
That’s when a Christian friend showed me a powerful little Bible verse about darkness and light. Isaiah 50:10 says, “Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.” When I read that, I realized, That’s me! I don’t want to be in the dark. I hate it. Oh God, please help me to learn how to live with this paralysis, with this quadriplegia! And from then on out when my sister Jay came into my bedroom in the morning, I’d ask her to open the drapes, turn on the light, and help me get dressed to sit up in my wheelchair. That’s when the depression started to lift, and the light of Christ began to guide my steps.
Many, many years have passed, and those dark days are far behind me, but still, whenever I sense discouragement casting shadows over my soul, I quickly turn to the light. I’ve been down that dark, grim, shadowy path toward despair before, and I never want to go there again. If Jesus said, “You are the light of the world,” which he did, then I'm going to live like it. And this year as we begin 2024 together, I want you to do the same. Friend, it’s a dark world. There’s so much heartache; so much despair. But our confidence in Christ can illumine everything around us. So don’t take down your lights. Let his love shine and remind this world that Jesus – the light – is the source of all joy and all hope.
© Joni and Friends