Stranded in the Atlantic Ocean RMS Titanic was facing her final few hours. Her hull breached by collision with an iceberg she was shipping more water than she was designed to hold and going down by the bow. On board chaos and confusion reigned with some saying everything would be OK with this unsinkable ship, while others scrambled to find room in the lifeboats of which there were not enough. All of this could have been going on in complete darkness if the engineers in the boiler room had abandoned their posts. But they didn’t and their selfless heroism meant the lights were still on even as the ship began her final plummet to the seabed. Their actions no doubt saved many lives.
We all need a light to shine to spare us from the dangers inherent in the darkness with which we are so often surrounded in this life. Wonderfully such a light exists. The prophet Isaiah declared ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light’, and hundreds of years later Jesus appeared and announced, ‘I am the light of the world’. Hold on to him and no matter what your circumstances, you won’t be struggling in the dark.
