The Darkness Can Never Overcome the Light!

Hello Church,

What a difference a week makes. What a difference a new day can make. Like many of you, Sally and I were uprooted to the one warm room of our house for the week. My week was focused around getting up all night to check for leaks and trying to catch the power on to start up the space heaters. At the end of the day, we were very very lucky and had no real challenges but it sure seemed big in the middle of the dark cold nights.

I have read and always understood that the early Christians made a name for themselves as a love-based new “way” of living during the Plagues of Rome in the third century. Bishop Cyprian talked of “grieving not, double your efforts to care for the living.”

I saw that last week. I saw it in the tired eyes of our own Susan Luttrell and Karen Marcucci, who left their homes in damaged states to work every day of the crazy winter storm to care for our building and our community. I saw that call to “caring for the living” in over 30 staff, staff family members, friends, and members, who showed up, some with trash bags taped over their shoes, to fight our little building flood. I even saw that Christianity in my neighbors who rarely speak but checked on Sally & me as we checked on them last week!

As proud as I was of those things that I saw last week, I know I missed so many more expressions of the love of Christ from each of you toward others as we put ourselves second for a time. I also know, as I saw today in our Missions & Care Center (building D), the work of being Christians continues. We are one of the City of Mansfield’s Emergency Control Centers for the painstaking recovery process for so many in our community. On one of the many large whiteboards and computer screens that Susan Luttrell has set up in a large open area… are the names not of church members.. but of those in our town whom we are already delivering water to, repairing their damage for, and oh yes… shining the light of Jesus Christ on!

Yes, I spent hours and hours literally in the cold and darkness last week but I was so comforted in knowing… the dark does not win over the light! That’s what Christians know.

See you Sunday,

TD