Recently, Jeff Aschenbrenner and I were replacing the evaporator coil on my upstairs furnace. For two years he had been replacing Freon, and we decided it was time to find the leak. Not being in the heating and cooling business, it was all Greek to me. I say we were replacing the evaporator coil, but to be perfectly honest, Jeff was replacing the evaporator coil, and I was there for moral support and to keep him supplied with refreshments. Mostly, I sat in the attic; talking and playing with all the cool stuff he has. I love tools, even if I don’t know how to use them.

Jeff was finishing up the first part of the job, which was setting the coil on the furnace, when suddenly the lights in the attic went off. I didn’t think much about it because we had plugged in a work light and could see just fine. After we had finished the job, we packed up the equipment, made our way from the far end of the attic around air conditioning ducts and six years of accumulated treasure toward the attic stairs which were located around an elbow. As we turned the corner of the elbow there was pitch-black darkness. Not only had the light been turned off, but the attic stairs were closed also. I don’t know if you have ever experienced total darkness while crouched over, loaded down with tools and equipment on a half-finished attic floor, wondering if at any minute you would step through the ceiling, but it tends to be a high stress situation.

In the pitch-black darkness I worked my way slowly to where I suspected the attic stairs were. I knew if I stepped on them it would be like stepping into a deep hole. At this point I was somewhere between thinking of the romance of the Chevy Chase movie Christmas Vacation where he was in the same situation and suggesting to Jeff we watch home movies, or anger that was about to erupt over this sick joke one of my children had played. I was already gun shy because I had fallen down the attic stairs earlier as I was backing down with this six foot long box of Legos Patrick and Eliot had found when they were “helping” us work. I missed the bottom step and the Legos and I hit the floor. I also bounced off the sidewall of the room, which set off a chain reaction of shaking a bookshelf, then antlers started raining down on my head and to add insult to injury a heavy wooden picture frame fell on my head. I was bleeding like a stuck pig and there were no more thoughts of romance.

In the scriptures, God’s Word is said to be light, a light for our path. You don’t really know you need light till you are in total darkness, then you know. What the Scriptures are saying is as much as you can see and experience in this world around you, without the guidance of the gospel you are in pitch-black darkness. Senses, feelings, instinct and appetite are not good judges by which to live your life. Left to these things unaided from a message from the outside, it is like me walking in the attic. I walk with fear and trepidation. Without light all confidence is gone; the next step might be deadly. Into this world filled with glory God in his grace has shed the light of the gospel in our hearts so that we don’t have to tiptoe around in fear. The light of the gospel in the Scriptures is like a floodlight the points out the landmines. Often, things that look safe on the surface are lethal and will disintegrate your life.

Without the light of the gospel, there is a landmine lurking underneath even the best of things that life has to offer. Whether it is good work, good moral sex, or good food and drink, just beneath the surface of these things is something lethal that can lead to disintegration. We can become workaholics destroying personality and family. Without the moral directives of the gospel, pleasure that seems so innocent and feels so good at the moment can someday detonate, like a time bomb, when you least expect it. Relationships without guidance and limits can lead you into co-dependence or enslavement which leads to its own kind of hell. How do we get there? Just following our instincts on most anything and we will find out.

Yet, into this darkness comes the glorious light of the gospel. The promise from ancient times was that there was a great light that would shine in the darkness and the deepest, ill- black darkness would not overcome. The only hope for freedom in this world with booby-traps and landmines is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is at every turn. He is the light, he shines into the darkness of our own desire to be gods and says I will show you how to live and navigate in this world of time and space. I will show you how to live a big life of joy. Even with danger lurking at every corner, you can live in freedom and without fear.

We often don’t take the metaphors in Scripture seriously enough. So many things Scripture tells us do not move us as they should till we are in the middle of them. For instance, the Fatherhood of God doesn’t mean as much till you have children. And, a trip into a dark attic would not seem like a place to be struck with the blazing light of awareness, but nevertheless, this seems to be the way God continues to speak to us.