John 1

February 13, 2013
Ash Wednesday

John Chapter 1

This Lent, I am going back to the beginning of the project.  Rather than any fancy ideas like last year, I will read one chapter of the Bible every day and reflect on some element of it.  As today, I may choose to reflect on only a single verse rather than the entire chapter.  This is by no means, therefore, a complete summary of the Gospel of John.

John 1:5 "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not overpower it."

I hope you, my readers, know well enough by now to know that I mean no disrespect by the comparison I am about to make.  This verse reminded me of some frankly quite beautiful passages in the novelization of Revenge of the Sith (STAY WITH ME).

Besides throwing out Lucas's dialogue (to the vast improvement of every single scene), the author adds several reflections on the darkness, saying "The Dark is patient, and it always wins" as a repeated theme throughout.  It talks about how the brighter the light shines, the darker the shadow, how it waits, how it endures.  Then, at the end of the book, the author reveals the weakness of darkness - a single candle can put it out.

I think one of the things that makes people worry so much, be so concerned that the end times may be near, that our society is going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah, may be forgetting that.  The light shines in the darkness.

Perhaps it also is one of the (many mysterious) clues to the question of why we exist at all.  Why we strange, ungrateful creatures with free will were deemed so necessary by an all-powerful, all-knowing God who would of necessity know how badly we would screw everything up.  There is darkness, and in it, the light.

When the light and the darkness go to war, the light always wins.  Not because of anything Hollywood, but because light chases away darkness by its very existence.  Yes, the darkness is what's waiting when the candle runs down, but if there is light, darkness cannot win.  You cannot defeat light with darkness.

But what happens when light and dark do not go to war?

Well, they set each other off to brilliant advantage.  One need only look at the sky on a clear night (out in the countryside somewhere) to see how well darkness shows the beauty of the light.  And I want to make a confused metaphors about the hazy of city lights being a metaphor for, I suppose a haze of good behavior that gets lost or overlooked in the flutter of daily life?  A hundred tiny, unacknowledged daily kindnesses.

Which is not to say that sin is required for beauty but that it is our imperfections, our cruel tendencies, our human frailty and evil, that sets the good that we do, the love that we show, into such brilliant relief.  If we can have love and faith and hope in our condition, we burn like the stars in the sky.  We are the lights in the darkness.  We need only remember that the darkness cannot overpower us.