We were the quintessential Christian family. My dad served as the Sunday School Superintendent, my mom led women’s Bible studies, and my brother was a stand-out vocalist. Every week, my sister and I were sent to our children’s classes where I faithfully held my little finger high. With a voice of innocence lost I would sing: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” desperately trying to believe the wavering flame of my little candle could.

I was four when it began, when the darkness tried to convince me it was light. Lust masqueraded as love. Usury pretended to be discipline. Authority hid in perverse power.

I accepted it. I had to. My childhood mind believed this was the truth; at least it was the truth about me. The winds of darkness blew and my little light flickered. Satan almost snuffed it out.

Flame is a mystery. I tend only to see fire where yellow-red and blazing orange flames dance. Yet the hottest flame is blue-white. Winds can blow and the yellow and red disappear in its strength. But the blue-white flame at the center, the core of the fire, will withstand the wind because it burns the hottest.

White light, his light, the imprint of his image in me can never be snuffed out by encroaching darkness. Though evil cannot win, it tries to convince me that darkness has a right to stay because evil happened.

But Satan underestimates my light. God’s light in me, the flame of his Spirit, is growing and pushing back the dark.

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, Nor have you satisfied Me with the fat of your sacrifices; But you have burdened Me with your sins, You have wearied Me with your iniquities. “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake; and I will not remember your sins.  Put me in remembrance; Let us contend together; State your case, that you may be acquitted.  (Isaiah 43: 24-26 NAS)

Those whom God appointed to care for me failed. Their sins wearied God and their choice to align with evil wrote my past but that choice cannot write my future.   In fact, God’s light has the power to rewrite my past. His presence enters my memories as I learn to face my darkest moments and place Christ there.  He straightens out the blurred, almost absent line of responsibility. It is in this contention where Christ states my case and acquits me.

My heart hovers between the death sin created and the resurrection Christ obtained. Here is the middle space of life, where hell has no power but Heaven is not fully realized. And here is where I write. I refute the lies of physical evidence with the permeating truth of his word. I write about the contrast of what should not have been and what will be and because of Christ I write with a renewed mind.

Every lie asserted by darkness can always be defeated by the truth of his light, because Christ knows about the middle space. It is the space between Christ’s death and his resurrection. Christ rewrote the words of hell when he descended and brought his light to face the darkness.

I am a bearer of the image of God. I hold the white light in the midst of immense darkness and the light is pushing back the dark, as I write in the middle space of my life.

For you cause my lamp to be lighted and to shine: The Lord my God illumines my darkness. Psalm 18:28 AMP

Enjoy Josh Wilson’s song “Pushing Back the Dark” one of the inspirations to share my story.

Thanks to Linda Crawford for the video!

Related articles

• A Light in Darkness (fromthepreacherspc.org)