Silent as light
At the church gathering we were part of this week, we sang the old hymn “Immortal, Invisible.” Two lines especially struck me … “silent as light” and “’tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.”
I remember hearing Dallas Willard preach many years ago on 1 John 1:5: “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you …”
How would you complete that sentence? With one of the ancient creeds? With the four spiritual laws? With a doctrine like justification by grace through faith, or penal substitutionary atonement? With the anti-imperial message of the gospels, or the inclusion of the other?
Here’s how 1 John 1:5 completes the sentence: “This is the message … God is light; and in God there is no darkness at all.”
God is light … silent, but powerful … bright, but often invisible until it reflects off something else … and even when visible, containing spectra beyond our ability to see … sometimes so bright that we are blinded by it … light that is literally – directly or indirectly – the source and support of all life on earth … an absolute in this universe of relativity … a mystery to us, even as it is the reality by which we see everything we see.