Light vs. Darkness

For some of us, allergy season is all year long. A ‘Seasonal’ allergy just means the various times it is worse than others. A common activity for allergy suffers is the sneezing bouts that last anywhere for three to six hundred sneezes. Okay, maybe six hundred is a bit of an exaggeration but it can feel like that many. You can recognize Allergy Heads because we have been known to walk around with a box of tissue or roll of bathroom tissue under our arm…we just never know when said sneezing bout will commence…again.

For me, mornings are particularly sneeze infested and I wake every day with a groggy sneeze head. We try to keep the windows open as long and as frequently as possible to catch the hilltop breezes and delay the electric meter spinning uncontrollably, and this a big no-no on the list of things to do for allergy suffers. Oh, well. We always have tissue and it’s cheaper than the light bill.

This morning has been a particularly stuffy head day so far and I still do not feel like I’ve got a handle on things. I’ve made breakfast for my Honey and we dined together. After getting Honey out the door, I headed back here to the office to start my work day. Even having done all that, I still feel consumed by the allergy fog. I made my way into the darkness of this part of the house, remember all this is going on before a lot of you are even awake and it's still dark out. Being the Electricity Sheriff of Hacienda Hill means I keep a constant vigil on extraneous light usage. I turned on the smallest lamp in my office before I headed to gather more tissue. Another sneezing bout hit and any clear-headedness I thought I had was gone. For a moment I was completely disoriented and turned around. I took a step in the direction I thought I needed to go but found myself staring into the darkness of the bedroom. My only thought was ‘don’t go into the darkness, step into the light.’ The two doorways are side by side. Dark and light just one step away from one another, I thought that was a great analogy for life.

Even as Christians we are easily thrown by life situations that cause us momentary disorientation. So much of this world comes at us from all directions and we can get bombarded by situations that confuse and confound. Without the guiding light of Jesus we can stumble around in the darkness not sure of which way to turn. It’s true, you know. Dark and light really are just one step away from one another. We make choices every day to either walk through the door into the light or walk into the darkness. Until the day Jesus returns to gather us to Him, we will have that choice before us. The enemy is always hoping we will stumble into the dark so he places his doorways of darkness side by side with the doorway of light. Foggy thinking brings on confusion and stumbling.

Even when we are stumbling around, we will always find the right way to turn when we are diligent to always walk toward the clear light of Jesus!