Looking for the Light

According to the book of Genesis, the beautiful, majestic creation brought about by God with such loving care undergoes a dramatic change as sin enters the world and mars the beauty that once was.  This changed creation grows steadily darker as the effects of sin proliferate and relationships among various component parts of creation disintegrate, as do their relationships with their Creator.  

The disintegration seems to reach a climax in the poignant words pronounced by God in today’s reading:  “When the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved.”

In the black darkness and chaos that has returned to earth, in the face of God’s decision to destroy the creation he had lovingly made, a faint light emerges:  “But Noah found favor with the Lord.”  This creation’s Lord will have nothing to do with darkness, but looks longingly for light—to protect, restore, strengthen and defend whatever is in the light.

In the mixtures of darkness and light, sin and redemption, evil and goodness, that we can discern in the world at large, in our communities, in our hearts, the human response is always to judge victory by sheer volume or weight.  But with God, the victory always goes to the light, to redemption, to goodness.

As the gospel of John proclaims of the Word, “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.  What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1, 3b-5).

Today, as we peer into the world at large, into our communities, into our hearts, with their many mixtures, will we judge victory by the sheer volume or weight of what we see?  Or will we look with God’s eyes, straining to see the light?  There God will be found, protecting, restoring, strengthening and defending whatever is in the light.