Light Enters Through the Cracks.
(Posted January 12, 2023)
“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968
In these short weeks since the turn of the New Year, I’ve noticed how the scripture readings have turned into the ability to perceive light even in dark places. In Christian theology for centuries, most of the effort has been placed on showing us how broken we are, instead of what that means for us in becoming whole, as Jesus showed us.
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How the Light Gets In
We are, indeed, broken in many ways and, you know, Jesus didn’t have a problem with that. He specialized in letting the light flow through those cracks when people reached out for him. That’s what his healing was all about.
Jesus understood that God’s created world wasn’t a perfect place. In this evolving, imperfect world, there are those who are born blind. There are pregnancies meant to be joyous that sometimes never complete their journey into the light of this world. And then there are cells in the body that sometimes go rogue and multiply themselves into cancer. All of these things happen even to the nicest of people. The cracks in this world are not a judgment or sentence. They simply are.
The Truth – and Light – Pour Through
But that’s where Jesus and this broken world come together. Jesus’s entire earthly journey with us was one of walking with people and picking up the pieces. It was between these shattered shards, at least partially brought together in the jigsaw puzzle of a life, that Jesus poured his light through the cracks.
The light is truth, and it will prevail, always, against the darkness. For those in Jesus’ time, some who encountered him were completely mended. Others, like the woman at the well, had the interior of her soul bathed in his light, and she was sent forth, not without cracks, but with his truth pouring out to those who would listen to her.
Prayer Brings Light
And so it is for us, in this imperfect world. Prayer helps us, perhaps not always to cure us, but to heal us as we battle our brokenness. Healing in the world of flesh and blood often involves scar tissue, but it’s tissue that is many times stronger than the tissue that never confronted trouble. This is also how healing affects us emotionally and spiritually. There’s not a person I can think of who has been broken in mind and body who hasn’t learned far more in their struggle than someone whose life has flowed smoothly.
This Jazz Sunday we will gather to bring together the pieces of some lives and maybe - just maybe – watch as prayer brings its light inside us.