Darkness and Light

I’ve been enjoying a two week break which has included a few fun days away with our three boys Scott, Tim and Liam. We stayed in a small cabin in Buchan Caves Reserve,360km East of Melbourne. The weather was fine and chilly and we had a great time exploring the region together – our senses were treated to some incredibly diverse expressions of God’s creation.

One of our goals for the trip was to experience the (underground) adventure of touring the Royal and Fairy caves in Buchan. These two caves are open to the public and are situated amongst a honeycomb of different caves featuring some spectacular limestone formations formed by underground rivers cutting through limestone rock. We really enjoyed both tours and appreciated gaining insights into the history of these caves and their discovery over 100 hundred years ago.

Towards the end of our Royal cave tour our guide said something that captured my attention, big time. She said that if she was to turn off the cave lighting we would find ourselves surrounded by complete darkness, and that in only 15 minutes, with no reference point to focus on, we would each lose our balance and most likely fall over, as we stumbled around in the dark.

To help us gain a greater understanding of this point the guide then flicked off the switch and we along with around 25 other tourists could not see a thing; it was completely dark – there was no light source anywhere – pretty confronting! Thankfully, after another 30 seconds or so (it seemed longer) the LED cave lights were switched back on – quite a relief to one and all.

Since that experience I have been thinking about those words from our guide; “Left in total darkness, with no reference point to focus on, within 15 minutes we would each lose our balance.”

Several spiritual insights come to mind;

1) Jesus is the Light of the world – whoever follows Him will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

2) There is a whole world of people out there who are stumbling around in the darkness, living un-balanced lives because they have no true reference point (Jesus) to focus on.

3) God calls His people to be light-bearers; allowing our lives to shine before others. (Matthew 5:14-16)

4) The Bible makes it clear that Jesus is our Perfect reference point – we’re called to fix our eyes on Him. (Hebrews 12:2)

5) As children of light, Christians are urged to have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather to expose them. (Ephesians 5:8-11) I’m wondering what this looks like in reality…

The boys and I gained some really valuable insights during our time away in Buchan.

I hope to share a few more of these in the days ahead.