John 12:27-36a
“While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’”
There’s something very magical about the liminal times of day – dawn and twilight. They are not quite one thing or the other, neither day or night. They capture in the ebb and flow of light the reality of the transition that is always happening within and around us. We are always on the way somewhere.
When in his Gospel John talks about light, he is talking about a different consciousness. Jesus is a brand new understanding made manifest – the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is a bright flame torching the darkness. His revelation shatters all that has gone before. “Figure it out while you can,” he tells the people whom he is teaching, and I feel the potency of being invited to become.
“Become. Become children of light,” Jesus bids us. My heart yearns for that state of being in which I am a child reaching out in wonder. I know where to find it; in contemplative prayer. Sinking down into silence and stillness, I feel the sun crest the horizon. Warmth fills my body, a belonging so deep there can never be words. Instinctively I know that here is where the world is redeemed.
It’s a process, though. At some moments I see with the eyes of the Lord. At others I am immersed in my tiny, dark ego perspective. When I believe in the light I feel my profound connection with everything that is. When I don’t, I am tangled in shame, competition and fear. By God’s grace I stand in the light of dawn. But then I feel the shadows lengthening toward night.
We do not have a lot of time. And yet, we have the eternal time packed into each moment. I am a woman at the threshold. And aren’t we all, each of us, always on the Way somewhere?
Laurie Gudim is a religious iconographer and writer living in Fort Collins, Colorado. For more information and to see some of her images, visit everydaymysteries.com.