In our daily meditations, we are continuing to think about Christ visiting and helping His people before He was born into the world. Paul the apostle called Christ the spiritual rock that accompanied them on their journey to the Promised Land:
1For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3They all ate the same spiritual food 4and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4).
When God began to deal with the Egyptian nation because of their enslavement of the Israelites, He darkened all of Egypt, but where the Israelites lived, they had light (Exodus 10:21-23). After their deliverance from Egypt, when Pharaoh and his soldiers chased them to wipe out Israel at the Red Sea, God brought darkness to the Egyptians, but to the Israelite side, there was light (Exodus 14:19-20). Christ Himself was the Angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate appearance of Messiah, who watched over Israel providing them bread from heaven, water from the Rock and light in the darkness while they crossed the Red Sea:
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).
No matter what darkness you have to walk through, Christ will be your light. Hopefully, you have come to a point in your life where you have asked the big questions of life, "Who am I? What reason do I have for living? Where am I going?" These questions can be depressing if you do not know the Light of the World, Jesus the Messiah. When a person is in darkness, he cannot see the next step before him, and stumbles around trying to find out where to go. In the same way, a person who comes to Christ begins to understand who he is, what he is living for and where he is going. Light is a picture of knowledge, whereas darkness speaks of ignorance and the things of this world. The more light or knowledge a person acquires, the less stumbling he experiences in his life.
There are times in our lives when we go through great difficulties when everything seems dark. When we lose a loved one, it looks as if the darkness is crowding in. When we are sick and want to just lie in bed, or even hope to die, many times it is because we have no hope and no light—no reason to live. These are the times when God wants to reveal Himself to you in a unique way if you will seek Him and ask Him. He will not come where He is not invited. He has given each of us the will to choose to walk towards the light or to stay in darkness. Coming to Him and learning of Him will bring us much light to walk through difficult times. It is written of Jesus, “by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11).
Many people experience darkness in their lives by not following Christ. Jesus said, "whoever follows me will never walk in darkness" (John 8:12). We must follow hard after Him, for His light is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105). Often, we would like to see further down the road of life, but God has only promised light for the next step, not the next mile or the next year, just the next step. Why is that, you may ask? The reason is that He wants us to trust Him in the difficult times of darkness. Whatever darkness you may be in, it's time to have your life lit by the presence of the Lord within you. Call upon Him in the day of darkness and let Him shine on you. Keith Thomas