light and darkness on Contrast

Put light against light - you have nothing. Put dark against dark - you have nothing. It's the contrast of light and dark that each give the other one meaning.

The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, bec...

Context We continue through the body of the letter as we move into a different image for practical, Christian living. Next week will become much more specific in Paul’s exhortations for living in re...

Context We continue through the body of the letter as we move into a different image for practical, Christian living. Next week will become much more specific in Paul’s exhortations for living in re...

Check out our video discussion of the text with the author, Austin D. Hill. Click here to view! Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Zephaniah’s Context The book of Zep...

Check out our video discussion of the text with the author, Austin D. Hill. Click here to view! AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Zephaniah’s Context...

Introduction John 1 contains some of the richest Christological passages in all of Scripture. It rewards deep meditation on its meaning. Its use as the Christmas gospel text is an opportunity to infu...

Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light.

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.

The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.

Restored or Thrown Out? Having grown accustomed to the redemption theme that permeates Scripture, I find the answer that Jesus provides to his own question in v. 13 unexpected and unsettling—like get...

Darkness is not the opposite of light; it is the absence of light.

It’s important to note that God does not obliterate the darkness; rather, God names it and limits it—puts boundaries on it. The boundary is the light.

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, because Paul’s point...

When I looked for God in the light, God was not there. When I faced the unfaceable, I found that I had joined God in the darkness. And so, paradoxically, the darkness had become light.

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.

Lord, we confess that we sometimes prefer the darkness to your light. We turn away, we hide, we seek our own way. Forgive us Lord, and renew in us a desire to walk in your light and to reflect your li...

We are a people that prefer the darkness. The darkness hides that which we wish others dare not see and that which we loathe about ourselves, our twisted thoughts, perverted practices, and foolish fol...

Leader: The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light. People: God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world migh...

“This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the sam...

One of the biggest challenges in the Christian journey is grasping the heart of grace. Oftentimes there is an internal battle between our theology and our lived experience. In this short excerpt, Fred...

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from the deepest wells. And the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine; Let me find thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, ...

Psychologists tell us that one of the most difficult conditions a person can be forced to bear is light deprivation. Darkness, in fact, is often used in military captivity or penal institutions to bre...

In the midst of an experiment to become more attuned to darkness, author and pastor Barbara Brown Taylor decided to spend time outside as dark sets in: According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, eve...

Leader: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. All: For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; Leader: but the Lord w...

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.

We praise you, O God, for light in darkness, for bonfires and beacons, for hope and companionship and bright waystations on our journey.

The dark night is a key part of God’s missional purpose in the world.

From the very first the Creator was both good and also just. And both His attributes advanced together. His goodness created; His justice arranged, the world; and in this process it even then decreed ...