Daily Lesson for January 31, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter verse 12:

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Today is the last day of 2018 and tomorrow we’ll step off into 2019.  What this New Year will bring to us, our families, our church, our community, and our nation we know not.  Yet though the road be dark and uncertain, we know we must go; for we can’t stay here in the present which will soon be past. So tomorrow we step out into the future — with blind faith that somehow we’ll find the way.

Jesus said that he is the light of the world, and that even though we may step in pitch blackness we who walk with Him share in an inner light which shines even amidst utter darkness.  This is the light which allows us to put one faithful foot in front of another and be not afraid.

I’ve always loved the excerpt from Minnie Louise Haskins’s poem “God Knows”, which was made famous when quoted by King George VI of England in what we’ve come to know as “the King’s Speech” amidst those first fearful and uncertain days of WWII:

“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God.

That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.’”

We may not have a light for walking the path into 2019. But we hold the hand of the one who is the Very Light of Very Light; and with Him we step with courage through the gate of of the new year whose way only God knows . . .