A lighthouse is a standing sentinel on high ground, a guide to navigation for those out on the open sea heading in to port. As a very young girl, I learned that from my father, a ship captain in the merchant marine industry for decades.
When the seas are rough and huge waves are tossing your boat in the stormy night, that pinprick point of light blinking in the distance brings hope and faith in one’s heart that somehow if you follow the light and hold fast, you will make it home.
American lighthouses these days, except for the Boston lighthouse, are fully automated. With satellite technology, GPS and other advances, navigating seems easier for the seafarer. Still, nature can throw its hissy fits.
In days gone by however, well before technology made lighthouses poetic yet anachronistic curiosities and light keepers expendable things of the past, men struggled to keep blazing fires on the shore to help seafarers navigate their vessels to port. The light helped sailors to steer clear of rocks, shoals and reefs that threaten to wreck vessels or make them run aground in low tide. The light in the distance meant hope despite pouring rain, swells and dark clouds obscuring the stars at night.
Our lives are like a journey in the open seas. Some seasons are calm and uneventful and we coast merrily along in the sunshine and soft breeze. Yet here is this niggling fear that things can change. And they do, in the blink of an eye. We have heard of cautionary tales and seen far too much wreckage.
There are certainly times when we experience those very dark and threatening storms of life when rough seas and tsunami-sized waves engulf us and toss us about like a rag doll. Some call it the dark night of the soul.
Through life, these can be a whole host of problems of varying difficulties in the physical, mental and spiritual realms. The hard realities of life stare us in the face. It can be the struggle to make ends meet or keep a roof over our head. It can mean the storm of sorting through, getting cut and bleeding from the sharp shards of broken relationships and heartbreak.
For many these days, this storm can be the pervasive and seemingly insurmountable struggle of trying but failing to break the demon’s grip of any form of self-imposed addictions that mutate into a stranglehold of deep depression.
It can be the final storm of facing the end of one’s mortality when the doctor gives the diagnosis of terminal illness. The meaning of the words, “Time is of the essence” hits home even if we know that death was never a matter of if, but when.
How does one come home to port from weathering all these storms of life? Do you have a lighthouse in the distance that can guide you home through it all?
Or have you strayed so far from your faith that light has gone out from your line of sight? Are you resigned to groping and moping in the darkness and allowing the black hole of self-pity and despair swallow you whole?
But should you, if you knew that there is THE LIGHT OF CHRIST that can help you head home?
Don’t be daft. Grow a spine and fight the darkness. Fight with all your might to seek that light. Get all the help you can get. Yet in the end, it is YOU that must make the choice to seek Christ who won for us victory and eternal life more than two thousand years ago.
Or have you nurtured through the seasons of your life, no matter the weather, this blazing yet steady light and love of Christ burning within you? Do you have that megawatt light in your heart so bright that it lights the path of those in your orbit as well?
If so, praise the LORD. Perhaps without meaning to, you have been transformed by Christ’s light and presence and became a lighthouse yourself.
Christ’s love is the illuminant that burns so bright and steady that you know that no matter what storm you may be going through, you will come home safe.
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The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
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