Daily Devotions

The people who walked in darkness

   have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

   on them light has shined.

                        Isaiah 9:2

The family who lives right next door to Vida Nueva Lutheran Church in Lima – the green house to the left – has lived there for 32 years.  The grandmother was the first to lay claim to the land – a small rectangle of deep sand on a steep hill.  She had heard that the government was allowing people to settle up on that hill and she wanted a place to call her own.

The requirement was that she begin living there immediately.  She spent the first few nights sleeping in the open on the hillside.  During the day she would climb back down the hill, looking for anything that could be turned into a shelter.  A piece of canvas.  A few boards. 

She dug into the sand, trying to create a level space.  Eventually she built a sort of retaining wall.  Each day she climbed back down the hill.  She would haul water and, bit by bit, build a place to live.  Finally her husband agreed to join her in scratching out a place to live on the side of that mountain.

They lived there 10 years before the government gave them a deed to their property.  They lived there 20 years before they had electricity and then water.  They lived there 30 years before the street in front of their house was finally “paved” – the rut filled sand was leveled and compacted so that a car could actually reach them.  But they have never owned a car and probably never will.

Now their home is quite nice.  It has lights, indoor kitchen and bathroom.  It is hard to imagine living life, raising a family, hauling water, and lighting candles each night, but that is how they lived for a long long time.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…

Isaiah sings a song of hope in the 9^th chapter.  It is a song sung yet in the hopes of better times, better days, which Isaiah is convinced will come.  Isaiah sees God in the future, reaching back into the present, as a ray of hopeful light.

May you sense and trust in the light of God, even as you walk in the darkness.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, sometimes the darkness feels overwhelming.  Darkness is fearful, often dangerous.  All we long for a glimpse, a peak, a moment, that reassures us that the darkness will pass.  Be that light in our lives.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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