She left to go to choir rehearsal without me; the Lovely Lady did.  As she gathered up her music, she asked the question.

“What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

It didn’t take long for my answer to come.  I say it often, sometimes even in jest. Okay, mostly in jest.

“I’m going to do what I always do when you’re gone.  I’ll sit in the dark and wait for you to come home.”

Pitiful, aren’t I?  The thing is, I sometimes do just what I said I’d do.

It’s not always because I’m sad or down.  Sometimes, I just need to think.  And the dark is better for thinking.  There are not as many distractions in the dark.

I was going to stay in my easy chair to sit in the dark while she was gone, but then I remembered that my sister had sent a note about the moon earlier.  It, Ruler of the Night, decided to come out before sunset this evening.  I suppose it decided that if we puny humans need to save the daylight by changing our silly clocks, it could help by shining an extra hour or two before its appointed time.

So, instead of sitting in the dark in our den, I went outside and sat in the dark there.

Except it wasn’t.  Dark, that is.

I had been thinking I’d look up at the sky before I came back in.  Then I could write my sister a nice little note to tell her the moon was okay.

The sun had gone down over an hour before.  But the moon was doing its best to actually give us some daylight.  The yard and field behind my house were illuminated like daytime, complete with shadows cast by the still-naked trees.

So, I couldn’t have sat in the dark, even though I wanted to.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall fall on me,’
Even the night shall be light about me.”
(Psalm 139:11, NKJV)

David, that shepherd boy who became king and poet, also thought he could sit in the dark and let it wash over him.  He was wrong.

He was made to live in the light.

I was, too.  I think we all may have been.

We don’t always understand what the light is, though.  It doesn’t look like we expect it to.  Just like the moon tonight, we are often surprised by the light around us and where it comes from.

Earlier in the day, I walked over to a neighbor’s house to talk with him for a minute.  I was a little unsettled by the sound of his router. He had been working on another project under his carport for an hour or more.

I wanted to listen to the songbirds.

The cardinals were being all sociable, with half a dozen of them at a time gathering in the oak branches out front—flashes of red in the sunlight everywhere I looked.  The finches and wrens fluttered in and out of the holly tree’s foliage, some carrying grass and leaves for the nests they are busily slapping together.

I did.  I wanted to listen to the birdsong.

But that noisy router just kept screaming as it ripped into the pieces of wood on the neighbor’s workbench.  So, I went to visit with John.  I had no intention of grousing at him.  I just figured the router would be quiet for at least as long as we visited, and I could hear the birds in that relative silence anyway.

He grinned as I approached, turning off the machinery as I anticipated.  Reaching out, he gave me a hug, and then he showed me his project.  He is making a container to hold antique serving dishes.  Not for himself.  A friend, whose grandmother passed away and left her the dishes, was worried they would get broken, so he designed and is making a container for them.

As we talked, he mentioned some things he is storing for another friend.  Then, still motioning to the stack under his carport, he told me about a different project he is planning for an acquaintance using the scraps of lumber he has there.  In passing, he made the offer to me to take anything I needed from his bounty.

I mentioned one of our widowed neighbors to him, and he told me of going over during a recent storm and bringing her to his house so she wouldn’t be alone while the wind and thunder were raging overhead.  And then, as I prepared to head for home, I mentioned that his firewood pile had diminished since I last noticed it.  He nonchalantly told about a fellow who had been walking down the street who needed wood for heat, and he had given him most of his supply.

I sit here, and realization hits me; my seventy-something-year-old neighbor isn’t sitting and moping in the dark.

He’s making light!  Shining it on everybody he meets, the light of God blazes from his face and fingertips.  I wonder if that’s what the apostle Paul meant when he said we were to be lights in the universe. (Philippians 2:15)  I think it may have been.

We’re not made to sit in the dark, awaiting whatever or whoever comes next.

We walk in the light as our Savior does.  And we have fellowship—communion, if you will—with all others who walk in that light. (1 John 1:7)

I admit it; I haven’t been as successful at shining His light as my neighbor has.  I’m not quite as noisy as he is, either, but I’m thinking I should get busy and catch up.

So, no more sitting in the dark.

It’s time to walk in the light.

And maybe—to make a little noise.

 

“A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness.”
(Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi)

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”
(Psalm 139:12, NKJV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.