Over Spring Break our family went camping at the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We met some friends from Dallas and camped for a few days. Our friends got there the day before us. They selected a site that was perfect.
It wasn’t primitive camping. It was a facility set up with multiple tent camping sites. There were bathrooms, showers and even BBQ grills at each respective site. It was a nice place to be sure.
The weather wasn’t great for a delightful camping experience, at least at first. It was cold, rainy, and of course, windy. After a day, though, the weather greatly improved. The wind subsided, the rain ceased, and the skies opened up most majestically. In, too, came the campers. By Tuesday evening, the campsites were nearly full.
Later that night, a rather large group showed up and pitched an enormous tent- in the dark mind you- right in the center of all of us. Unfortunately for them, this wasn’t exactly a tent site. It was a place where horses could be tied off. There were, hyperbolically speaking, tons of left over hay and horse dung all over the place and that group slept right on top of it.
Now give the guys a break. It was dark and the lighting was rather poor, so it was difficult to tell what was on the ground beneath them. But that is what happens when you’re operating in the dark, you often do things you wouldn’t normally do if you could really see.
I think that is why Jesus, John, and Paul spoke so frequently about the light and darkness contrast. They spoke of the power of light, the doom of walking in darkness, and the miseries of darkened eye-site. Bad things tend to happen in the dark, things a lot worse than pitching your tent on top of a bunch of horse manure.
Walking in darkness, though, is not an uneasy thing to find yourself doing. Those who walk without Jesus are doing it now and don’t even know it. Some even effort to walk with Jesus but it is as if they are hiding him with a quilt, or even worse, a straight-jacket. It’s as if he’s the delusional friend they are trying to control lest he make them do irrational things. But he’s hidden to be sure.
Jesus is to be put on, though (Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 3:3-4). He is to be worn by us. And when he is, he actually makes his way inside us and dwells there. His light radiates in and through us so that we do not walk in darkness, but instead walk in truth, because he is truth (John 14:6).
I’ve tried walking with Jesus in futile, unproductive ways. It has made a laughing-stock of him and has often hurt his cause. It was walking in a way of darkness. I cannot contain or restrain Jesus. The man who could not be contained in a tomb definitely cannot be contained by me! Approaching Jesus this way isn’t much different than unknowingly pitching your tent on dung.
