BitterSweetLife

It should never be said that simplicity and profundity cannot coincide. Oscar Wilde quipped that "the truth is never pure and seldom simple," but he was overlooking an important tool here: eyes.

Case in point: In the morning I need light. The sun rises, and what a relief. It arrives just in time, because I grab it and hang on.

Not just occasionally, not just once every couple weeks, but every a.m. when the alarm goes off and I kick back the covers, jump across the carpet, and slam back the button that will put an end to the piercing blare. Believe me, I need light.

The need goes beyond the unnamed law which states that without it I will not reach full consciousness, let alone remain there. It goes beyond the fact that without it I would continually stub my toes on the way into the bathroom. And the verifiable theory that without light I could not brush my pearly whites or style my GQ hair. (Forgive the embellishments there.)

My need for light is more profound, as deep as the hope that pushes upwards through my rib cage when I actually see the dawn. Every morning my day needs a center, a fiery star to unveil the world around me once again, give a modest clarity to this place in which I live, and help me grasp once more, with an adequate certainty, just where it is that I am headed.

The first-century theologian Paul put it well: "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6).

That initial commanding of light was an act of pure creative power, a making of light ex nihilo, out of nothing. Since I've come to know Christ, a similar thing has taken place in my heart, a spiritual creation that gives warmth and sight. There is light, the kingdom of God, where there was only darkness before.

This new light-making depends on the glory of God, so dramatically revealed in the flesh and blood face of his son, Christ. Now something similar is happening in me, morning by morning. Christ is giving me, and everyone who knows him, a startling alternative to darkness: Christlikness. This is the reality that drives me to the Bible and to prayer, day after day after day. No makeshift spirituality here, but simple desperation. I need my daily Christ-light like I need daily water. I need to know who and where I am, who and where I'm headed toward.

Without my light at daybreak, I'd be stumbling all day long. So sit down Oscar Wilde. It's a pity you missed this truism. When I see the sun rise, I'd be a fool to forget what I need each morning: Light - and not just sunlight, but the meteoric light of Christ.