Smile, it's Monday!

Good morning! Happy Monday :) I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

This morning I wanted to share with you a devotional. Just a little something to brighten up your Monday :)

Whether it’s coming through our window on a Saturday morning. Or shining through the curtains, displaying the day’s shadows all over the room. Or if it’s illuminating the sky on your late evening commute home from work. Wherever we see it, light always catches our attention. It draws our eyes towards it. It makes it’s presence known.  There is something else, though, that makes us very aware it is there. And that is darkness.

Darkness is deep. Like the deep depths of the ocean.

And it can often make us feel as though we are under the waves, with no scuba gear, no snorkel, no rope to pull us back up. Rather we are just floating there.. surrounded by nothing but darkness and eerie silence.

Have you ever been there? Have you ever found yourself drifting off to sea, going deeper and deeper as your breath got heavier and heavier. Life can take us there, and sometimes more than once. 

I have a fear of bodies of water (I’m sure there is a real name for it out there somewhere). I don’t like not knowing or being able to see what is underneath me or in front/behind me when in water. I’m sure someone out there can relate when I say that I feel the same way in life sometimes. The fear paralyzes you and makes you feel as if something bad could happen in seconds. Do I move forward? Do I move backward? What is going on under me? Where will the current lead me? What am I leaving behind me? These questions often go unanswered in those moments of panic. When darkness is thick and silence is all around you. 

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5

The light talked about in this verse in John may not be the same light shining through our windows in the morning. This light is better. Too beautiful and pure for our eyes to see, and for our minds to grasp. How can there be light in such deep darkness? In such heavy silence? Those moments can feel like despair. But you are not drifting alone.

I have had my fair of share of suffocating in darkness. I’ve felt that despair. Those lonely feelings that come like crashing waves. But I’ve come to learn something.

Just because the waves are crashing down, doesn’t mean God isn’t there.

Just because darkness is thick and you cannot see ahead of you doesn’t mean God doesn’t have a plan and a path for you.

Just because silence is so heavy, doesn’t mean God isn’t listening.

It’s hard to be alone, but it’s always in those moments when God reveals himself. 

When we quit trying to fill voids in our lives and fill empty holes in our hearts left there from broken friendships, lost loves, skewed opportunities.. it is amazing what God can and will do within you.

When we’re lost in the darkness, exhausted from the thick heavy air, and we surrender to Him.. saying “God I don’t know where I am headed, I don’t know what is going to happen next, but what I do know is that I am lost, I am hurting, and I am needing you. Come and save me from my own darkness.” When we surrender and seek with all that we have left, he will carry us through the fog. As life keeps throwing it’s lemons I am learning more and more that sometimes you just need to do things alone. With God, of course. But alone. On your own. Just you, your heart, your darkness, and God.

He is the ultimate light. The most beautiful light. The sun that shines in your window can’t save you from the way you’re feeling inside. But God can. That light can. And will.

Remember, no darkness has overcome Gods light. And as we grow in him and spend time building our relationship with him.. that light continues to grow in us. And no darkness can overcome it.

Remind yourselves of these truths, today. 

I hope and pray that this helps you through your Monday, and that you take some time this morning to rejuvenate and prepare to dive in to another week :)