Lead Me in the Light

by Holly Swafford

“For thou art my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my darkness.”

2 Samuel 22:29

Can you imagine a world without light? Everything would be black. No color. No beauty. No sight. No candlelight or firelight or sunlight. No light at all.

I wonder if that’s why light was one of the things that God created first. He couldn’t imagine a world without it either.

The human eye loves light. We are instinctively drawn to it. Light can change a room for us. It affects our mood. It affects our perception - of what’s around us, of where we’re going. It helps us see clearly.

It’s one of the most basic necessities of life, yet, with everything that scientists have discovered, they still don’t fully understand how it works. It’s one of God’s mysteries to us.

God loves light. The Bible makes that clear. Make a quick search in your Bible app, and you’ll probably be surprised, like I was, at how many verses contain the word light.

There are so many beautiful comparisons that I wish I could share here. But to save this post from being way too long, I’ll leave that part up to you to do on your own time and just give you a couple that I love!

• Oftentimes, the Bible uses light to represent God–His truth, His guidance, His pure wisdom. Psalm 36:9 “...in thy light shall we see light.” 

• Secondly, light is used to represent the lives of the righteous–those who follow in God’s light. Light is to darkness what righteousness is to evil. Proverbs 4:18 “But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

So where am I going with this? I hope you don’t feel like you're in the dark! I’ll try to shed some “light” on it.

Maybe you're like me, and you still haven’t learned that it’s important to turn the lights on at night. Instead you go stumbling through the house or down the stairs (I’ve about missed that last step so many times for this exact reason).

Needless to say, it can be a bad idea sometimes. It’s a good way to stub your toe or run smack into a wall. If you know, you know.

But! There’s a simple solution: just turn on a light.

If we could learn to look to the Light in the dark times of our life, the answers to our questions would be simplified.

How? By consistently being in His presence, by reading His Word, by attending to the things we have heard so that we can see where we’re going.

If it’s in His light that we see light, we must stay in His light. Then our paths will be filled with light and our way will shine brighter and brighter before us. There will be no fear or dread of the future, for we will trust in the Light that is guiding us.

He will not let us fall or lose the way.

It is easy to become anxious when faced with big decisions. We search for advice in so many places and wind up more confused than ever.

But God is a God of clarity. He’s the Lord of light and not of darkness. So look above all the shadows around you to the true Light.

You may not see it all at once. Sometimes He’s like a lamp and only shows us the next step to take. But no matter where you are, He won’t leave you in the dark.

He will “lighten your darkness” and make your way clear if you will let Him lead you in His light.