Pursued hard by evil to the Light (and Light wins)

I’m standing at the sink, washing the day’s dishes, when I hear it one more time–the chime of an incoming message. Drying my hands, I snap up my phone, for my racer and I have been chatting. And it’s him.

“Hey, sorry,” he says, “but I need to go to sleep. We have to leave at 6 in the morning, and it’s already 1:40 here.” That’s a.m.

“Where are you going?” I say from half a world away.

“The beach.” I stop. And he finishes. “I might be helping them out of boats.”

Laying down the phone, I step back over to the sink. My body is here in my warm and lovely kitchen, but my mind, my heart have taken wings, landing on foreign soil. On a rocky coastline in Greece.

On the counter, a candle burns. Flame dances and flickers, and through the cracked-glass shade, light-beams fracture, diffusing color, fragrance, warmth. It’s the light.

Outside my window, the darkness. And in war-torn lands, there, too, stalks the dark. There, where bombs fall, where the innocent die, where wickedness rules and reigns, evil chases. Looks for blood, grasps for power, reigns with terror. Evil’s pursuing.

The pursued, they wash up. In rubber rafts, boats all wooden, on a storm-lashed scrap of soil come the desperate.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+DiggPinterestBloggerLike Hasebullah. Who’s 15. Who is an Afghani. Who was injured and scarred when bombs fell.

He had a mother.

I am seeing his face, that marked, handsome boy, and the faces of a thousand more. They, the desperate by evil pursued…to the light!

To the light. For there, where waves crash and roll, boats scraping on rocks, waits the Light. In flesh, blood and bone, the Light waits. The Light reaches, arms all outstretched for the lost. Chased by evil.

And so in the darkness, the Light–oh, the Light wins. It shines through the cracked glass of His children. On wild sea’s shore, the Light-beams, they fracture, diffusing color, fragrance, and warmth. To the desperate, the scarred, those pursued hard by evil…

To the Light.

I rinse the last dish. I tuck it away, and I think of two boys and two mothers. Her son is 15. My son’s 22. Hers pursued. Mine, the shining, love waiting. And Jesus, the Friend of us all. Amen.

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Photo credit: AnnaKate Auten

Photo credit, Hasebullah: Stephen Zenner