The flickering lattern

By joannsblog2016 on August 9, 2022 • ( 2 )

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path.
Psalm 119:105

Do you experience pot holes along your journey?

What if these little pot holes in our journey cause the light in our spirit to dim or burn out. Leaving us feeling stuck in the pot hole. Like something has deflated our tire and we have nothing left to move forward.

I’ve experienced this lately. Often it feels like negative energy gravitates around me. It literally sucks the air out and distinguishes the fire in my spirit.

One evening after the sun had gone down, I took my dogs outside like I normally do before bed. This particular night, there was a nice little breeze, unusual for an August evening in Texas. I sat there in the silence, something I’ve longed to do lately but haven’t been able to. As I sat in this stillness, allowing myself to be present to God for about five minutes, I noticed my pathway lights in my yard. Half of them were lit very brightly and the other half had a tiny light flickering. In that moment, I could sense God drawing me in to notice the differences in these lights and my own spiritual path.

There have been times when the path was brightly illuminated and everything I saw, touched, read, smelled poured into my spirit. But there are these moments when the path seems dark and only a tiny shimmer of light illuminates.

In order for these little lanterns in my yard to produce light, they have to absorb energy from the sun. Those that were brightly lit, obviously had absorbed more solar energy than those that were dim and flickering.

In our spiritual life, sometimes that lantern is hidden under a shadow of all the stuff that surrounds us and we aren’t able to embrace or delight in the presence of God. We just feel we are trying to survive, to keep our head above the water in all the waves that are crashing against us. But here’s the thing, God still shines in the midst of it. He still radiates a small spark, a tiny flicker.

What my spiritual director helped me to see recently is that even in this dark shadow that the sun isn’t able to penetrate there is still something that is life giving that keeps the light from distinguishing. In order to allow the lantern to burn brighter on the path in the midst of this negative energy, I need to seek what is life giving even in these moments of darkness.

God is definitely found in that tiny flicker, the life giving piece of those dark moments. That flicker is His invitation into His presence.

We are challenged today to seek and find the life giving source that illuminates this lantern within us, especially in these moments that rip at our very being telling us lies that there is no hope, that we aren’t good enough, we aren’t loved, we will never find peace, dark clouds will always hover over us, and whatever else that takes away the life the Spirit breathes in us each moment.

Lord, let us feel the life You breathe into us in every moment of our journey, especially along the path that is covered in darkness. May we seek and find life in the midst of our struggles. Amen.