Light Offers Us Direction

I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

–John 14:6

Light is a good description of Jesus because light offers us direction. Imagine the pilot of a giant jetliner trying to land in a driving rainstorm at night. How does the pilot find that strip of runway somewhere in the darkness below? The lights on that runway that shine and blink, directing the plane to safety.

In the same way, how can we successfully navigate through the darkness and uncertainty of this life–and, more importantly, the darkness of eternity? Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). We need Jesus to lead us safely through this life and into His presence for eternity.

Maybe you’re a Christian, but you feel like you’re being smothered in darkness. Talk to Jesus about it. Ask for His guidance and His power. He doesn’t promise to show you everything that’s going to happen in the future, but He’s like a flashlight that illuminates the next step you need to take.

Every year around Christmas time, radio broadcaster Paul Harvey told the same story to illustrate the meaning of Christmas. The story was about a man who was sitting at home alone on a cold winter’s night. As snow began to fall, the man heard a thumping sound against the living room window. He went outside and found a shivering flock of birds beating in vain against the glass. Touched, the man bundled up and trudged through the fresh snow to open the barn for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights and sprinkled a trail of crumbs to direct them inside, but the birds continued to flail helplessly in the snow. The man tried catching the birds, he tried shooing them into the barn, but nothing worked. He realized that he, a huge alien creature, terrified them. The birds could not understand that he actually desired to help them. If only I could become a bird, he thought, then I would not frighten them so. I could show them the way to warmth and safety. And as the church bells in the distance began ringing the tidings of Christmas, the man fell to his knees in the snow as he grasped the meaning of Jesus’s birth.

Jesus Christ did not just illuminate the way to God; He is the way to God. John 1:4 says, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.”

***

Today’s devotion is adapted from “When Darkness Overcomes the Light” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2023.

Story paraphrased from Paul Harvey, “The Man and the Birds,” Christian Heritage Fellowship, https://christianheritagefellowship.com/paul-harvey-and-the-man-and-the-birds/.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.