Daily Lesson for November 19, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Revelation chapter 22 verse 5:

 "And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever."

Jacques Lusseyran was a typical 1930sParis schoolboy who was blinded in an accident at age eight.  In his autobiography, "And There Was Light", Jacques wrote of a discovery of an inner light of vision which allowed him to experience the aura of things unseen. To his amazement he was able to negotiate spaces, skirting chairs and avoiding walls because he could "see" them with a kind of inner light:

"Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us…I could light myself…that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting… God is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, not intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive."

When the Nazis invaded France Lusseyran in 1940 Lusseyran was 17.  He joined the French Resistance and was subsequently arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.  While in prisoner, Lusseyran lost his inner light. His hatred for the Nazis and frustration with his own circumstances took over. He began bumping into walls and tripping over chairs. But that is where something deeply important dawned on him about himself and the world: that there was a light within him that only he could put out, and no one else.  In due time he regained his inner vision.

Reflecting on Lusseyran's life, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that there is a light which shines in the darkness and can therefore only be seen in the darkness. This is the place where as the Scripture says, "Night will be no more," -- when even into the darkness the light shines, and the light is more than sun shining, or moon beaming, or stars twinkling outside, but is altogether the Very Light of Very Light glowing from within.