Isaiah 9:2 The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.

The Bible can be described many ways, but one of those is that it is a book of hope. Many people have caught onto that, and there are lots of churches and other ministries with “hope” in their names. This passage is of course familiar from Christmas, since it is one of the most famous prophecies of the Messiah. The later verses are most famous, but this one hit me just now. The image of people walking in darkness seeing a great light really hit me. Today we are so used to all sorts of artificial light that we forget what it’s like to walk in darkness. One time in my childhood my parents had gone to a meeting at a location about a 15 minute walk away, leaving us children at home. (Today they might be accused of “child endangerment,” but it was no issue back then.) We had recently adopted a sickly puppy, and while our parents were gone, we discovered that it had died. Not really knowing what to do, my brother carried the puppy and we traipsed off to where our parents had gone. This was out in the countryside, and there were no streetlights, not to mention that the route was a path, not a street. We got to the meeting place only to discover that the meeting was over and our parents had headed home, on the same route we had taken. We had passed each other in the dark, not recognizing each other! That’s what it’s like to walk in the dark. We were focused on our footing, and didn’t pay attention to anything else. The second half of the verse says “deep darkness” in modern English translations, but the Japanese sticks with “the shadow of death,” as in the very famous 23^rd Psalm. Families who have experienced a member being in an active war front can understand this, perhaps, but back when Isaiah wrote this, life expectancy was much shorter than it is today, and there were countless ways people could die. Practically everyone lived in “the shadow of death.” The point is, God has a plan, and in the Messiah there is hope. Hope is a fundamental human need, and when hope is evident, people want to know about it. As Peter said, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1Peter 5:15) Those who know Christ have hope, and we can share it!

As a missionary, my life is dedicated to sharing the hope we have in Christ. I was born and raised in Japan, but after I had brought my wife and children here for the first time I remember a moment during the Festival of the Dead, held in the middle of August every year, when I was hearing people carrying the “spirit boats” they had made for family members who had died in the previous year, banging gongs, chanting, and setting off firecrackers, to send their loved ones off to the “spirit world,” and I was overwhelmed with how hopeless it was. We’re approaching the same festival this year, and nothing has changed. The difference for those who know Christ is so striking that funerals are actually a very effective tool of evangelism, because they express hope. I am surrounded by people who are walking in darkness, and my prayer is that I would be a carrier of light to them indeed, for their salvation and God’s glory.

Father, thank You for this reminder. I hadn’t thought of that time as a child of not even recognizing my parents in quite a few years. Thank You for sometimes using me to help people recognize their heavenly Father, so that they may repent and believe for their salvation. May it happen more and more. Praise God!