When I was in Junior High School we lived on a street in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA that was littered with other kids my age. We all knew each other and played together on warm evenings and when the weather was not cooperating, we would play video games in each others homes. It was a great place to be a kid. One of our favorite games to play was manhunt. If you don't know what manhunt is, its essentially hide-and-go-seek in teams. Now we wouldn't begin the game usually until the street lights came on and we would use our whole street as our playing field. We would all gather after our respective dinners, dressed in the darkest clothes we owned and would well into the night.
The good players would have flashlights and keep them off until they think they have found someone. Once the kid is found you'd quickly turn the flashlight on, shine it in their face and walk them back to the "Jail," (which was my next door neighbors front porch). I remember one time we tried to play the game during the day and it simply didn't work. Hiding was hard, it was easy to find everyone, and we simply hated it. The point, we found, was to play in the dark so that those who are searching for us had a huge obstacle to overcome in order to find us.
Darkness makes most everything more difficult with the exception of sleeping and watching a good movie, darkness makes everything harder. Have you ever tried to drive at night with out headlights (or perhaps forgotten to turn your lights on)? It is hard, like everything else without the aid of light. John 8:12 Christ says that he is the Light of the World. On Sunday we talked about this idea that Christ is the Light that takes away the darkness. He is the light that illuminates our path. The darkness that consumes the world, hatred, anger, deceit, depression, sickness, loss, heartache, and any other negative that you can think of paints a picture for us that is gloomy and truly makes life hard to get through. But when we live with the Light of Life, when we believe in Christ, when we choose to follow the Light, then any hardship, any darkness will be irradiated by the Light of Life. It doesn't make life easy by any means, but it gives us the ability to see to navigate properly through the darkness that surrounds us.
