Irrepressible Light May 29, 2008

Once, in a house where I no longer live, a creative child had stencilled glow-in-the-dark stars onto navy walls. When I moved in, the room looked a bit like stepping off the edge of the universe into deep space.

I decided that lilac was more suitable for a young women and her first room in a new town. And so we set to the task enthusiastically with rollers. Shrewdly, we decided on some coats of white paint first. The navy was pretty all-pervading, and so we counted on two or three coats to cover it…

…After six we became somewhat disheartened. The walls still betrayed their dark undertones, and the stars simply stuck out. There was no covering them.

I think we may have got to eight coats before the navy was gone. The stars were still a little bumpy but by that point the initial thrill of decorating had long since departed. We slapped lilac over the top and hoped for the best.

That night, I collapsed into my (paint-fume filled) new bedroom. I was pretty exhausted and still in that, “Oh my gosh why have I moved 200 miles from my home town” sort of frame of mind.

Then, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I found myself laughing.

I’m sure my equally new housemate must have wondered what on earth was going on. Why was her new friend hysterical at 11.30pm?

The reason for my mirth was that, dotted all over my walls, utterly unhampered by the layers of white and lilac, were countless, happily glowing stars. In the daylight they were hidden, it looked like we had been successful in our quest to eradicate the creativity of the previous occupant. When the room was shrouded in darkness however, the scene was very different.

I lived a year in that room, and I’m happy to report that when I stayed in it again eight weeks ago, the stars were still very firmly in situe (I found myself wondering if there would ever be any way to get rid of them?)

I’ve been thinking a lot about those stars this morning, their irrepressibility, their constancy, the way they fought to shine through the layers we covered them with.

It strikes me that it is in the dark moments of our lives when the light of who God is shines through more perfectly. It looks like that light will be covered, blotted out, hidden, and yet there is no hiding it. It pops through the darkness with the same confidence as the glow in the dark stars on my wall.

I didn’t have to do anything to make the stars shine. They shone because that was what they were designed to do. In the same way I realise that I do not have to do anything to make God’s light shine into the places of my darkness and confusion. It just does, because that is who he is.

When it’s daylight, when I am walking through spacious meadows on easy paths, sometimes I forget the reality of God’s light. The stars stay hidden under the paint and I do not look or say thankyou for them. My prayer is that I can truly become less complacent, and more reliant on his light to lead me at all times.

“Oh light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May fairer, brighter be.

O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be. “