Day 20. The Light of the World
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"To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" Luke 1:79
Suppose the sun were never to rise again, and the light of every star were put out — what a gloomy world this would be! This is the picture of the world, in a moral and spiritual sense, without Christ, as it is painted in these words, "darkness and the shadow of death!" — no light to guide, to cheer, to produce joy and beauty.
A world without Christ would be utter blackness — unilluminated by a singe ray of sun, or even by a single far-away star. Christ is light. Only think what light does for us! It makes our days very bright; it shows us all the beautiful things that are around us. But it does far more. It produces all the life of the earth — and then nourishes it. There would not be a bud or a root or a leaf — were it not for the sun. Nor would there be any beauty, for every lovely thing in nature — the sun paints. Think of Christ, then, as light. His love brooding over us causes us to live, and nourishes in us every spiritual grace. Every beam of hope is a ray of light. What the coming of light is to a prisoner in a darkened dungeon — that is the bursting of mercy over the guilty soul. Light gives cheer; and oh what cheer the gospel gives to the mourner, to the poor, to the troubled!
Is it not strange — that any will refuse to receive this light? If one would persist in living in a dark cave, far away from the light of the sun, with only dim candles of his own making, to pour a few feeble, flickering beams upon the gloom — we would consider him insane. What shall we say of those who persist in living in the darkness of sin — with no light but the candles of earth's false hopes to shine upon their soul? There are many such, too. They turn anywhere, rather than to Christ. It is like preferring a dim candle — to the glorious sun!
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