In the following week, he issued another challenge for us to live 1 hour for 2 days without light and despite I couldn't have the whole house completely dark, I got to participate in the effort by turning off the light in my room and bathroom. Sure enough I did learn couple of points from doing this exercise, from simple lesson to a significant lesson. This post will be about the three lessons I learned from the exercise.
Inability to find and distinguish things
The first simplest lesson is how difficult it is to find items and choosing clothes. This might sound trivial and obvious, but it does imply that without light it's difficult to navigate your way and find/get what you want. If you expand the interpretation into a higher plane in navigating our life, it is not so obvious for a lot of people that if you don't have a light guiding you, it's almost impossible to navigate your life and find what you want or need.
Following the Zeitgeist of this age which drives people centered on themselves, people nowadays tend to think that they know how to navigate the way in their life. They will argue that I can navigate my life themselves from their experience and learning from other's experience. That is true to a degree, since I also memorize the layout of room, and the location of most things in my room. Sadly, our memory and experience is never perfect. There will always be things we don't know and being in complete darkness, will render us unable to navigate our way.
Faintest light matters
Secondly, I learned my lesson when I went to take a bath. My bathroom is a room without any window, hence without the light on, the room is almost pitch black. The only light source is the light which went through the small gap below the bathroom door. Since I memorize the layout of the bathroom, I was still fine taking a bath. But since my house still uses the gas based water heater, when I turned on the hot water, there is a faint flame lit up in the water heater and surprisingly, the flame I ignored all these time emits a faint light which brightens the pitch black room slightly. This faint light might not be noticeable in the normal condition when I have the light on, but in the pitch black room, it matters a lot. I could see in the dark bathroom much better and navigate myself much better all because of this faint light.
This faint light triggered me thinking. Even the faintest light, which usually was ignored means a lot in in a pitch black room. I feel the light gave me a comfort as a Christian. I have always struggled to find myself with sin and how can I be a blessing to others while having to struggle with sin at the same time. But it turns out, we have our own role as faint light. We don't have to have the pressure to shine bright like famous preachers, or missionaries who change people's life. As long as we persevere in God, He can still use us to guide the pitch black world back to Him.
Reflex of finding light
The third and final lesson I learned from this dark period is how desperately was I looking for a light. I don't know how many times during the period, my hand reflexively reach out for the light switch to get some light. Of course when I was about to press the switch I realized that if I turned on the light then it was meaningless to stay in the darkness. This habit actually continues even after the complete dark period. Every time I felt the room is a little dim, I would reflexively reach out to the light switch to get the bright light.
This led me thinking how desperate are we looking for a bright light to guide our eye to navigate our life. But why do we often think that we think we can navigate our life by our own? Because we often assume that the environment around us is bright. Of course you wouldn't look for your light switch or any additional light source when the environment is completely bright. But if only that the environment is just a bit dim, you will look for one. When we think that we are walking in light, we would never think that we need light. If we do think that we need Jesus as the light guiding our path, then it is the gift from the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to realize that the environment around you is pitch black.
Conclusion
The sermon on the mount shouldn't be a foreign part of the bible for Christians in general. But sometimes it takes us to really experience the absence of the things told in the bible to have a deeper understanding on the passage. Despite missing the #nosaltday, I am thankful I got a chance to feel the #nolightday.
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