Have you ever been spelunking? If you don’t know what that is, it’s exploring caves. If you get deep enough into a cave, you can turn out the lights, and literally cannot see your hand in front of your face.
Usually, when we’re in the dark, we’re not really in the dark. At night, Streetlights and houselights illuminate the night sky. In our houses, a hundred digital devices have their clocks, power lights, and charging indicators. Just walk through your house at night with all your lights turned off, and count how many things still have lights on them. Even if the power goes out, there is the light of the moon and the stars.
The pitch black of the depths of a cave is a surreal experience. You turn your flashlight off, but you never take your finger off the switch. You imagine your batteries going out. You imagine dropping the light and the bulb breaking, and you realize just how helpless you would be. Total darkness. No light.
The Bible says that spiritually and morally, this is what our world is like. We live in a world of darkness. John announced at the beginning of his gospel that Jesus was the light of humanity (John 1:4). In John 8:12 and 9:5 Jesus makes a remarkable claim. He says. “I am the light of the world.” This claim is partnered with a stunning promise, “Whoever follows me will have a life filled with light and will never live in the dark.”