1 John 1:5-7

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Composite image of the Earth at night.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all  sin.

There is a serious problem in America, and the world. It seems that we are losing the ability to peer into the blackness. I have seen blackness, and I am not sure I want to see it again. I have seen blackness in different times of my life, in different ways, too, as I will explain later. But I can understand why astronomers want the ability to see their hand in front of their face, which rates as a 1 on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale. They can't see otherwise.

As David Dickinson writes on Universe Today in his post "In Search of Darkness: The Battle Against Light Pollution," a good majority of modern Americans have never seen truly dark skies. "I was fortunate to grow up in northern Maine in the 1970s with skies dark enough to see the summer Milky Way right from my doorstep," he says. "For most of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, this is no longer the case."

I have seen blackness twice in my life, both times in the 1980s when I was in the Marine Corps. The first time was with my buddy, Craig, as we camped in the forest on Palomar Mountain. The second time was with a platoon of Marines, under the jungle canopy in the northern training area of Okinawa. Let me tell you, it was quite frightening to be in the dark like that. Think about it: You can't see YOUR hand in front of your face. Maybe you can get the idea of what it's like in a dark closet. But there is no comparing standing in a closet with walking in the blackness outside, through the jungle, to an unknown destination.

I also have experienced blackness as John describes. I am sure you have too. It's called sin.

Now that I know what living in sin is like, what living without God is like, to be honest, I would rather take a walk in the jungle without being able to see a hand in front of my face than to experience the effect of sin that left me in a black hole. It is far more frightening living without God.

So why do people do it? Even worse, why are their people sitting in the pews of our churches doing it?

The Bible, especially John's writings, are full of references to living in the light of love. And can their be a better feeling knowing that, when you put your trust in God, he won't fail you; and even if you slip in the dark, God will pick you up, shining his light on your life?

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