Daily Reading for April 12 • Adoniram Judson, Missionary to Burma, 1850
Night. All is dark. I can see no sense in things. Thousands are dying of starvation, thousands drowned in floods for no reason. Nations promise one thing and do another. Our leaders mislead us. I feel repressed, restricted. All is dark. The darkness is outside; it is inside, too. In myself I see darkness, failures. I hurt those whom I love. I shout and scream at them. Is there any light?
Look! A light, but it is so faint. And there’s another, and another. All through the world, and the history of humankind, I see lights. Where does this light come from? Is it a reflection? This man’s life, this hero, his life stands out like a light. Or this woman, she reflects a bright spot in the gloom. This man, this woman, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, that mother who gives herself to her family, all these and many more, appear to shine with a light that is not their own. As I look now, I can see the light behind them, brighter than the rest, which all the others reflect. This Light shines in the darkness, and is not put out. This Light is the life of all human beings.
I turn to the Light, the Light of the world. “Give me your light: let me reflect your light. Light of the world, Light of Christ, shine through my life too. Bright Sun, let me shine with your light, as the full moon now shines in the dark sky.”
From A Vision of Wholeness by John Gaden, edited by Duncan Reid (Sydney, 1994).