Fiber Optics

John 1:5 “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God… The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” I’ll be preaching in a few weeks, and as I started to pray about what to share, I got an interesting picture today. Many of us have hit some dark moments especially over the past year and have struggled to make meaning of it. One of my friends told me that she can’t understand why bad things happen to good people, and sometimes she gets angry at God for the dark episodes in the lives of those around her. John 1 refers to Jesus as both the word and the light. It’s interesting that the infrastructure that is used to transport words from one place to another now uses light. When I type a what’s app message to my sister in New York, my phone encodes that into zeros and ones, then that is passed through fiber optic cable beneath the sea. A burst of light represents a one, while a period of darkness represents a zero. (This is a slight oversimplification but essentially the gist of it). A cable filled with constant light carries no meaning and no message besides “onnnnnnnne.” But a cable filled with moments of darkness and light can craft a word like “LOVE.” It can communicate the gospel message, that God values you so much that he sent his son to die for you. It can convey the depths of His heart through a love letter of thousands of pages called the Bible or a TV series like the Chosen. In the context of eternity, our dark moments will feel even shorter than the microscopic blips of darkness in those fiber optic cables. But while we live through them, we can take comfort that God uses them to craft a much greater message of his love. Lord, thank you for blessing me with meaning. Sometimes I wish dark moments would end, but I know that you use these for a much greater purpose. I pray for an eternal perspective today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.