Life in the Dark

And so we begin...



God's care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God Himself.

 ~John 3:16

I don't think I've ever heard such a common verse put in such an uncommon way. It's beautiful. The contrast between "a futile and failing existence" and the "undying life of God Himself" is, I think, what this book is all about. It's what the Bible is all about. It's what life is all about. And it's as fitting an intro to this grand work as any I could imagine.

Chapter 1 does not begin with the Eternal Life, however. It begins with the "futile and failing existence." It's where we all are or have been: in the dark. Willard gives a more modern example, that of a pilot flying upside down. Intending to pull up, the pilot flies headlong into the ground and explodes, much in the same way that our lives tend to. 

Interestingly enough, while we can commonly point out the surplus of stories of exploding lives (drug addicts, broken families, wrecked marriages), and while we often are told how to avoid such explosions (don't do drugs, don't cheat on your spouse, don't put work above your kids), these so called solutions often tend to be instructions on how to miss the ground, rather than how to fly towards the heavens. 

Where is the instruction manual on how to flip the plane over. I don't want to spend my life skimming the ground, looking down, and fearing that one slight mistake could end everything. I would much rather be focused on how much I enjoy the fact that I'm given the opportunity to fly. I would like to be so far above the ground that I can experience freedoms in my flight, I can experiment, and I can take risks, knowing full well that my plane was built for just such a journey as this. 

But alas, this is rarely the case. We don't find instruction booklets on how to "fly right side up" because so many people are afraid of being judged for making such a statement. After all, if you give someone instructions on how to fly upright, they will immediately assume that you consider them to being flying downright wrong. And who wants to be told that?

I do. I wish I had been told that years ago. I wish I had understood what this book has begun to enlighten me to... that there is a better life, a heavenly life, a life eternal, an undying life of God Himself... and this life is available to me, and has been available to me since the day I was born. I'm making a conscious decision to turn my plane over, and I'm thanking the one who pointed out that Heaven is the other direction.