Let There be Light

Shadows, Secrets, and Struggling to Be Seen

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

~ Genesis 1:1-2 ~

I still believe in “good.” Or at least I still want to. Each day, though, seems to challenge my fortitude. Personal and national, professional and in the church, news spreads like wildfire threatening to extinguish my hope. My hope that evil doesn’t win. My hope that good prevails. My hope in the ancient wisdom that coos, “In the end, the just and the righteous win out.”

But today, I just don’t know.

A couple of nights ago I was grappling with the same struggle. The same phantoms flitting about cackling canticles of despair. I awoke around 3:30am, immediately aware I wouldn’t be able to reset my slumber by simply flipping my pillow to the colder side. Begrudgingly, I went out to the living room, sat in my new favorite chair, and opened my old trusty prayer journal.

Without much thought, I scrawled these five words, “God, do you see me?” Tears flooded as each witness was called as evidence to the contrary. And at the end of each paragraph, without thought and seemingly without control, I scribbled the same, “God, do you see me? Really see me?”

I’m not sure such a query is normal for humans. The desperation and despondency, yes, but the question, “God, do you see me?” isn’t typical for sinners, even those saved by grace through faith.

Ever since Eden, humanity has craved coverings, fig leaves to barrier us from God. Foliage to conceal us, especially when we hear him walking in the cool of the day. We cling to secrets fashioned and formed under the cloak of night as if they contain power, as if they nourish our spiritual bodies. We are betrothed, then, to “not being seen,” believing lies like “everybody has skeletons in the closet.”

But what if we didn’t? What if Christians committed to emptying every chamber of their hearts, clinging to vulnerability and grace, trusting in mercy and the childish belief that goodness triumphs over evil? That truth is more powerful than secrets? That the light of the world came into our darkness to heal us. To unite us. To set every wrong right.

I mean, what if confession were treasured? Truly treasured. Truly sought as the key to unlock our bondage. What if we actually believed that when we usher our sin out from darkness and into the light that new creation is possible. That through confession, a new existence could come. What if we truly believed that words create worlds.

In the beginning, God spoke and the cosmos unfolded, the chaos corralled, the darkness dispelled. With divine tenderness, God wooed creation into existence with four simple words: “Let there be light.”

The first invitation was for light to emerge. At its own pace. However shy it may be staring into darkness without end.

I emphasize “invitation” because this wasn’t a calloused command relying on force to overpower any semblance of choice. No, when God spoke the subjunctive “Let there be…” he was communicating a wish. A desire. His desire. His invitation to partner with what may emerge if enough courage could be uncovered.

In the beginning, as the first day unfolds, I can almost hear God saying to light, “Do you see me? Can you find your way to me? Do you want to draw near to me?”

Maybe that’s what I was really saying at 3:30 in the morning. Sure, my question siren-ed, “God, do you see me?” But, like most questions, there’s a deeper one hiding just behind the first, almost like a shadow, connected to it even though it truly isn’t it. A deeper question within me that still lingers even after forty-three years of seeking God’s face and sparring with sin’s barbs and barriers: “God, do you want to draw near me?”

I struggle to be near to me. To truly sit with myself. My true self. Not the one others expect of me or assume about me. But the true me void of fig leaves and fully exposed by divine light. “I’m repulsive,” I quip as God incessantly cries, “My son, where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). I cower if his gaze drifts in my direction, and even attempt to scurry if I think the coast is clear.

Yet at the edge of the sea of myself, I fear the beasts that lurk within the wake. I’ve seen their power when vengeance rips me into its undertow, when self-preservation sweeps me out to sea with currents only aimed away from the shore and toward the vast open ocean.

So, I guess I’m hemmed in. The chaos of evil’s ocean on one end and the torture of God’s light on the other. The pain of both too much to bear.

“God, do you see me?”

Maybe there’s more courage in those five words than I first thought. An uncommon resilience in such a question. A commitment to be seen even if I feel unworthy of anyone drawing near to me.

In some sense, to ask “do you see me?” is to simultaneously state, “I want to be seen.” Which seems so foreign and far from the truth I imprison within my darkness.

Confession: I hate stages. Even the ones I preach on. I know, I know: I’m supposed to love and cherish the honor of preaching God’s word. But I don’t. I don’t crave the pulpit. I didn’t sign up in service to our King to set foot on a stage. And no, this isn’t some rhetorical trick to repulse something everyone craves in order to receive something no one gives easily: admiration. No, this is something more like, “everyone has deserts—they just don’t all look the same.” And I never feel more lonely than when I’m on a stage.

Yes, the lights are bright and everyone is staring, but I feel like from up there no one can really see me. Truly see me. That I’m creating and committing to an illusion. A caricature of who I am, crafted by words and rhetorical strategies intended to draw people closer to God even though a lot of people simply feel closer to me. Or at least the “stage” version of me.

I’m grateful the Lord uses my deserts for kingdom fruit, but what I truly crave is to be seen. Truly seen. As I am. Not as the stage presumes.

Much of life is this way, I’m afraid. A mixture of cravings and illusions, stages and shadows. Sin attempts to create, to construct illusions that distort the real and the true, because, at its core, sin is a cheap imitation of God himself—the Creator who used words to create worlds.

In the dead of night, sin stirs us with delusion. With worlds fabricated from darkness, resistant to any light, refusing any partnership or negotiation, for our fear will ignore any plea and persist with its own agenda regardless of what we crave or clamor for.

“You are alone,” sin snakes, “so cling to the darkness,” sin coils, “for no one will draw near to your disgust,” sin venoms, “no one will love you through this night,” sin strikes, “for there is no good, all is lost, all heroes are liars, everyone clings to their secrets, and power belongs to those strong enough to destroy others with it—even themselves.”

I look over to my front door as the first rays of day tickle the outline of the owl on the window.

“God, do you see me?” I whisper.

In this collision of the dark of night and the dawn of a new day, I hear God smile back, “My son, let there be light.”

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