*This original blog post was accidentally deleted by yours truly. If you saw it once and now it looks different, that’s why.

Back in April, about 2 weeks into our stay-at-home orders in NC, my husband was tapped for what we ended calling COVID orders. He would be part of National Guard units who would distribute food to families who needed it, mostly in rural North Carolina.

The night he left for an indefinite amount of time, I was singing a song to my daughter at bedtime that had a line about light. I don’t think it was “This Little Light of Mine” but the idea was we were going to shine our lights, which were powered by the love God put in our hearts.

At the end of my song, my daughter, still 4 at the time, poked her little index finger up in the air and said, “Don’t let Satan blow it out.” She had no way of knowing the kind of stress we would all be under the next umpteen months, but she knew that should we let it, fear and sadness could win the day. And to the very best of our ability, we do not let that happen.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us. 1 John 4.

Fear and darkness, bitterness and regret, those things cannot win when light is present; it is physically, literally, and spiritually impossible. We are meant to carry the love God with us wherever we go—for ourselves, our spouse, our children, our friends, our neighbors, our cashiers, our church volunteers, our frenemies, our nemesis. Everywhere. So that even when the light isn’t available, knowing it exists within us powers us to move forward.

When my daughter was first born, we also had just moved into a new-to-us home. I had to learn the path from my bed to her bassinet, even in the dark, so that I could feed and comfort her, so that I could love and nourish her, even in—and especially in—the dark.

When we shine the light within to the world without, that’s exactly what we do.

So shine that light, friend. Shine it bright.

My most recent podcast episode is titled Eventually: the Light, so clearly that is a topic that’s been on my mind. What happens when the light & dark seasons get mixed up? What happens when we expect light, and instead the darkness surprises us? Where do we go with that? Listen in (or read on with the transcript) to find out some thoughts on what to do when a dark season surprises us.

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I send a Monday Morning Blessing every week & it was inspired by a 2013 sermon series about blessings & cursing using our words from Manna Church in Fayetteville, NC. See a sample & sign up for that right here!