Coco Calling No.319 - About Light and Darkness

Hello again everyone! Last week, I was telling you how my owner and his wife recently travelled to Greenland and had an amazing experience. (Well, -amazing if you don’t mind the Arctic chill blowing up your feathers!) And one thing that they had to contend with was 24 hours of continuous daylight. This meant that they had to be very strict about when they went to bed because the lack of darkness can easily confuse the body’s biorhythm. So, to keep some semblance of day and night, they went to sleep every night at 11.30pm and woke up again at 7.30am. And this seemed to work.

Of course, 24 hours of continuous light is one thing, but what happens in the winter when, for a couple of months, there are 24 hours of continuous darkness? What does that do for the heart and the mind? Well, the Innuits up at 78 degrees north, are born and bred to it. So, they keep their tiny strings of Christmas lights up all the year round, and nearly every settlement comes with its own smattering of strategically placed lampposts. Hunting and fishing have to take place in the pitch black in appallingly low temperatures, and it’s probably only the promise of spring and summer that keeps everyone going.

Your human lives can be a bit like that. There are some phases when everything can seem wonderful and the sun shines on you 24/7. But then comes the cloak of trouble and strife, - of problems and maybe illness and pain, -when the entire world can become a very dark and oppressive place. And then, it’s not the present that keeps you going but the promise of what is to come. Perhaps the hope that things will change for the better, or failing that, -if you’re a Christian, -the promise of deliverance, salvation and eternal life in Heaven. The vast majority of Greenlandic Innuits know this, for when it’s pitch black, they look up at the moon and the stars and the aurora borealis, and they know that God is never very far away…...

“All of the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”                                                                                                   (St. Francis of Assisi: [c.1181-1226]: Italian Catholic Friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans).

“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”

(St. Francis of Assisi: See above)

“A beam of God’s countenance is enough to fill the heart of a believer to overflowing. It is enough to light up the pale cheek of a dying saint with seraphic brightness and make the heart of the lone widow sing for joy.” 

(Robert Murray McCheyne: [1813-1843]: Scottish preacher and pastor who died very prematurely of typhus.)

“To trust God in the light is nothing, but trust Him in the dark, -that is faith.”

(Charles H. Spurgeon: [1834-1892]: English Baptist preacher, still referred to today as ‘the Prince of preachers’.”)

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’.” 

(John 8:12)