A Blinding, Wonderful Light

Recently, I was talking with my friend Don about favorite movies from our childhood. On weekends, my neighborhood friends and I would take the streetcar to the corner of Gwynn Oak Junction where we would run up the block to the Ambassador Theatre.  

Purchase tickets… race to the candy counter… load up on popcorn and Good & Plenty… and stake out our seats midway up the center row. It was a grand place to be on a Saturday afternoon. We’d hoot and holler over black-and-white “B” Westerns or watch Tarzan of the Jungle.

They don’t make movies like that anymore. They don't make movie houses like the Ambassador Theatre. Don told me about one theatre he frequented with an unusual feature—it  had no lobby. You would pay outside, walk through the glass doors, pass through a curtain, and immediately bump up against the back row. When the movie was over, Don and his friends would leave the dark theater and be struck by the sun’s blinding glare. There was no vestibule to ease you out of the black and into the light. Once outside, kids would stumble, rub their eyes, and exclaim, “Whoa, it’s really bright! Where is everything?!”

Don smiled and said, “I thought about that old theatre when I recently read 1 Peter 2:9, ‘We are a people who... declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness and into his wonderful light.’”

“Why would a verse like that make you think of a theatre?” I asked.

“As a Christian,” he said, “I forget the shock, the blinding jolt of being called out of spiritual darkness and instantly placed in the kingdom of light.”

He’s right. In this world, we forget. We Christians live in a kind of vestibule, or a lobby, of constant grayness. We can hardly recall the jolt of being plucked out of the kingdom of darkness and placed in the dazzling bright kingdom of God's dear Son. One minute we were heading to hell; the next, heaven. One minute we were dead in our sins and under His wrath; the next, we were alive unto God and enjoying His favor.  

Consider it. We once were blind, groping in spiritual darkness; then suddenly, the eyes of our hearts were opened to the Light of the World. Before we knew Christ, everything was closed and claustrophobic; but with Christ, the whole universe opened up to us. Nothing gray about that!  And it’s the thought that should overwhelm us with amazement.

When we become a new creature in Christ, it is a shock. May the eyes of our heart never become so dulled by this dark world that we forget the night-become-day reality of our life in the Lord. Jesus Christ has saved us, a brilliant change—a change about which we can’t afford to become complacent.

Take a few minutes today and surprise yourself with the blinding truth from 1 Peter 2:9. You just may stumble, rub the eyes of your heart and exclaim, “Whoa, thank you Jesus!  You are incredible!”