The light still shines …

There are days when the darkness in this world becomes painfully visible. September 11, 2001 was such a day. Twenty-five years later, we remember a terrible act of evil that took nearly three thousand lives and brought immeasurable grief into the lives of those who loved them.

On this anniversary of 9/11, I find myself thinking of John’s words about Jesus Christ: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it,” John 1:5.

John’s words acknowledge a reality every generation eventually encounters. We live in a fallen world where human beings can choose evil and cause terrible suffering. Yet Christ remains the Light, beyond the power of darkness to extinguish. For Christians, that truth gives both direction for the present and hope for the future.

Jesus said to His followers, “You are the light of the world — like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden,” Matthew 5:14. Those who belong to Christ are called to make His light visible through the way they live. September 11 gave us a painful picture of how radically different human choices can be. Some chose to take innocent lives. Others willingly placed their own lives in danger to save people they did not know. The darkness present that day did not prevent courage, sacrifice, compassion, and love from being expressed within it.

That remains part of the Christian calling in every generation. We cannot control whether another person chooses evil, but we can live faithfully before Christ in a world where evil exists. His light is seen through lives governed by love rather than hatred, courage rather than fear, and sacrificial concern for others rather than disregard for human life.

And Christians know where the history of this fallen world is going. Scripture gives us a future in which the darkness that has accompanied human history finally ends. John later describes what God will bring about: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever,” Revelation 21:4.

That promise reaches directly into the grief we remember on September 11. Death and the suffering human beings inflict upon one another belong to an age that will end. They have been part of human history for as long as sin has been part of it, but God has already declared their destination.

Twenty-five years after September 11, darkness remains painfully visible in this world. So does the calling of those who belong to Christ. We bear His light while darkness remains, knowing that the day will come when evil has committed its final act and death has claimed its final life.

Then the words with which John began his Gospel will have carried us all the way to the world John saw at its end.

The Light remains.

The darkness does not.

Scotty