We headed west today for our annual Dec. 26-31 trip to Iowa. We stopped off in Iowa City and were on our way to Des Moines (it was around 5:30 pm) when my son got concerned.
“Dad, do you know the way?”
We’ve only driven to Iowa three times a year for his whole life, but I assured him that, yes, I knew the way. Still, I was curious.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s just so dark.”
He’s right. It is so much darker than in Chicago and it always takes me a while to readjust to seeing the blackness of the sky and those little pinpoints of light. Stars, I think they’re called?
But the darkness is also comforting and it reminds me that, in some ways, darkness gets a bad rap. We’ve spent a lot of time ragging on the darkness these last few days as we sing praise to the light. John 1:5, which we read in worship yesterday, says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” There are similarities between Genesis 1 and John 1 and Gen. 1:5 also talks about darkness. “God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning–the first day.” Darkness was important enough to receive a name. Night, which, of course, is when Jesus was born.
I get that darkness is a metaphor for evil, or whatever you want to call it. But remarkable things have happened at night, in the dark. And there are amazing things that are dark, like coffee, chocolate, earth.
Light is beautiful, of course, but I think it needs dark for it to really shine.