Rage! Against the Dying of the Light OR This Little Light of Mine

I've always been a little dark.  For all my goofiness and for all my manic episodes, quite predictably there have been many dark days.  And that has been the arc of my story: the fight against the dark.  My identity has been one tainted by sadness.  As a boy, and I was a happy boy, I always felt haunted by a feeling of ache or emptiness.  I think it was partially guilt, both legitimate and also religiously induced.  But there was something more.  I was and am sensitive to the world.  I have a high capacity for empathy and what my heart has always whispered to me is that things just aren't how they are supposed to be.  

Without guidance, an emotional boy gets easily confused.  The world becomes too much, too much hurt, too much disappointment so you do what you can to make it go away.  To everyone else, you're a fun guy, but in the quiet moments alone when there is no escape from your own thoughts, the ache creeps in.  It's an emptiness that sits in the pit of your being and bids you to jump in.  This is The Fall.  This is the corruption of the Earth.  This is Sin, that compassion for others can wander down a dark road to self destruction.  The Love for my neighbor that God built into me got reprogrammed to a search to meet my own needs and to make a giving boy into a selfish man.  

So in my journey back to Jesus, there has been a lot of deprogramming the years of reprogramming.  In most cases the wires and the hardware and back up drives have all been ripped out, leaving things very basic and very sensitive.  I have become a raw tangle of emotion at times.  When Jesus comes for you, he doesn't come to make you comfortable.  He comes to make you his own.  To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, you had ideas for a few general improvements, maybe a fix here and there, but Jesus is coming in to you and wrecking the place to make a suitable residence for he himself to live.  I get easily overwhelmed by my emotions now and I have to be okay with that.  I have to trust the work he is doing.  I have to let myself be his.  It has led to a lot of Joy, even in the very midst of Pain.  

In church on Sunday, a thought eased into my heart and passed over my whole being, leaving me in a state of wonder.  I can't remember the sequence of thoughts that led me to the revelation but this may very well be a turning point in my understanding of who I am in Christ.  You see, my path back to Jesus has been one plagued by the fight against the darkness in me.  All though I have tried to surrender my complete identity in Jesus, I have still had the notion that I was by nature, Dark.  And while philosophically this can remain true as I am indeed a sinner, that mustn't and needn't remain my default.  I've thought myself a dark soul struggling and searching to be healed by the light.  But I have now realized that I am actually Light by nature struggling to be revealed, to be shone.  I am a Child of Light, I am a Child of God.  It is a fruitless battle to try to beat back the dark down in to the pit of your soul.  But in the Power of Jesus, he ignites a fire from within, a light that drives the dark out completely.  

1 John 4

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear

My Grandma Hodges used to look at me and talk to me in a way that suggested that I was a "Good Boy."  Scotty Angel she called me.  It made me sick.  It made me feel guilty.  It made me feel like she didn't know the real me.  This feeling was indicative of every relationship I would have throughout my adult life.  I always felt like, "If this person knew what I was like on the inside, they would be horrified."  But maybe she saw that little light inside me and she was doing her best to coax it out.  It is a great Joy of my life that I got to express to her how much I had come to love Jesus and nothing could have made her happier.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity