Darkness

The closer I get, the larger my shadow

There is a great number of writings in the world of religion, and perhaps elsewhere, about light.  In Christian circles Light is often a metaphor for the Triune God, which may not be difficult to see the connection if you are a Christian:

Light gives life and without it we would be in the dark and dead.

One of the things we Christians strive for is to move toward the Light.  It is also a common teaching that Christians are not the light, but that we are to live in a way that we reflect the Light into the dark places.  There is a Jewish teaching that Jews are called to be repairers of the light because when the world was created light was scattered around the world.  Jews are to look for the shards of light and return those shards to the source in order to help repair the world.

But one of the things we often forget about God as Light is that the closer we get to the Light the larger our shadow becomes.

Sometimes those who believe they are closest to God forget that they cast a large shadow and unintentionally keep others from seeing the light.

Sometimes when we get so close to the Light we have a greater awareness of just how large our own darkness can be.

So may we become aware of the greatness it is to move closer to the Light so that we might see with greater clarity, but may we also be careful that the closer we move toward the light we can often see our own darkness easier and keep others from seeing the Light.