#Sermons on light shining in darkness series
#Sermons on light shining in darkness crack

Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. Taken from Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weepby Tish Harrison Warren Copyright (c) 2021 by Tish Harrison Warren. But if we are to learn to trust-to place the weight of our lives on the love of God-we can only learn this through the cross. GodвЂ™s love is refracted through the cross, which often makes it hard to see or recognize. God loves us passionately and wants to bring us joy and flourishing, but this doesnвЂ™t preclude a cross. ThereвЂ™s an aphorism repeated often in the writings of the medieval church: per crucem ad lucem, through the cross to the light. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place.Д®verything else was almost pitch-black.

#Sermons on light shining in darkness crack

The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. I was standing today in the dark toolshed. Nick Cave, Speech: вЂњThe Secret Life of the Love SongвЂќ, London, March 30, 1999. *EditorвЂ™s note: Nick Cave has at times self-identified as a Christian and at others not, regardless, the argument is an interesting one. The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love, for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil вЂ“ the enduring metaphor of Christ crucified between two criminals comes to mind here вЂ“ so within the fabric of the Love Song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering. A year later he gave a slightly revised version of the same speech at LondonвЂ™s Royal Festival Hall.

#Sermons on light shining in darkness series

In 1998, Nick Cave, an Australian rock/pop artist, was asked by the Vienna Poetry Academy to give a series of talks on the nature of song-writing. Looking back, I would say it was the Holy Spirit emanating from her, showing us an inner light that was so impressionable I remember it to this day, some twenty years later. Somehow later we discovered she was, as we suspected, a faithful Christian. There was something about her, she was our age, a peer, who made us feel a sense of comfort in her presence. But what was fascinating was, after returning to our room, I was chatting with one of the friends who had also met the young woman and somehow, this woman came up in our conversation, and we both had the same impression. Not her looks or her intellect, but rather, something like an inner radiance. It became clear to me that there was something special about her. There was a woman in the group with whom we began a conversation. One weekend we were in the popular backpacker city of Interlaken, Switzerland, and having just checked in to our hostel, happened to meet some fellow college students/travelers from Wisconsin. We always had Fridays off so that we could travel around Europe on the Eurail pass. When I was in college, I lived abroad for a year in Germany. Experiencing the Inner Radiance of a Fellow Believer Taken from The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor by John R. Just so, the influence of Christians on society is intended by Jesus to be both negative (checking the spread of evil) and positive (promoting the spread of truth and goodness, and especially of the gospel). The influence of light is positive it illumines the darkness. The influence of salt is negative it hinders bacterial decay. вЂ¦ It may be argued that salt and light have complementary effects. They change the environment into which they are introduced. Salt and light are both effective commodities. Quoted in John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 98. This prayer, written by the great British pastor and poet John Donne, anticipates the new heaven and new earth that we will one day experience with our Lord:Д«ring us, O Lord, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light no noise nor silence, but one equal music no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession no ends nor beginning, but one equal eternity in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Awakening into the House and Gate of Heaven