Driving at Dawn

I drive to work in the pre-dawn light. The landscape and the sky above are gray, devoid of color. Glancing into my rear-view mirror, I see headlights behind me. Rapidly eating up the roadway between us, the lights pursue me, threatening to capture me in their glare. Soon my eyes ache from the harsh lights shining in my mirror, obscuring my backward vision. I focus my gaze on the road ahead. The sky has changed from dingy gray to the palest of blues. Before the sun has shown its face, the clouds reflect its brilliance in shades of pink, purple, gold, and orange. Gradually, the sky brightens; the vivid greens of the landscape around me stand in bright contrast to the gray of moments before. Soon the sun rises, casting a golden glow on each blade of grass, where countless drops of dew reflect the sun’s light. The world is bathed in the soft, early morning light. Although the sun itself is far too bright for my eyes, its golden light casts a glow of peace and serenity on my small world. The headlights which only moments earlier blinded my eyes now pale in the sun’s brilliance.
The spiritual lights in our lives parallel the lights I view on my early morning drive to work. Satan’s “light” is like the headlights. Relentlessly pursuing, his harsh glare prevents me from seeing the road, from seeing the way I should travel. Satan’s temptations and ruses, like the headlights which blind us in the dark, seem so bright, but God’s light, like the rising sun, makes them pale. In the light of God’s brilliance, Satan’s lures are barely discernible. One hardly notices headlights on a brightly lit day.

Satan’s puny light is magnified in the darkness. My attitudes, when I exclude God, leave me in the darkness and make Satan’s lights appear brighter. In order to avoid blindness from Satan’s light, I must constantly walk in God’s more brilliant light. Constantly seeking God intensifies His light, obliterating Satan’s feeble imitations. Satan’s light pursues from behind, threateningly. God’s light beckons ahead, calling me to run to Him, causing me to seek His face, His glory. His brilliance is so great I cannot look at it, but I bask in the warmth and glow of His love.

O Father, keep my eyes constantly looking ahead toward the one true light that does not threaten to overtake, but softly beckons, “Come to me.”

Isaiah 42:16 “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the smooth places rough. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.”