light in the darkness

I was recently at an advent day retreat. I came with a keen sense of pain, mine and the world’s. I began listening to God.

God: If my response is joy, then what?
Me: Then I can have laughter from a light heart.
God: What if there’s no problem I cannot solve?
Me: Then there is light that will not go out in the darkness. But Lord, the dead, the dying, the wounded, those who despair . . .
God: Let me. . .they belong to me.

desiring to be like the light of morning

While reading a few lines about the father in the story of the prodigal son throwing a party to express his own joy, I know that we can send out radiant life from our beings to others as the father did. That joyful father reminds me of the description of a just king found in the hymn of praise, in II Samuel 23. “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.”

Isn’t that what we desire, to be like the light of morning; in any way like the sun rising on a cloudless morning?