the light that breaks through all things broken…

{photography and excerpts from Ann Voskamp's blog}

A
sunrise like that could make you believe.

Could make you believe that color is real.

Could make you believe that that no matter what the headlines scream, no matter where you stand on the curving earth, we are all held together by the same gravity, that we all share air.

You could stand there and weep at what isn’t.

And at the wonder of being alive, weep for a world where no one takes a slug of steel to the heart, but everyone gets arrested by the beauty of grace, where no one is followed but Christ alone, where everyone is equal and different and the same and distinct and ours is a world that could listen to angels: Be not Afraid.

You could stand there with light on your face and not turn away to the easy of the dark and the status quo and cynicism, and you could believe in a world where no one is profiled but everyone is profoundly valued, where boys walking down the street with Skittles are simply asked if they need a ride home, where grace is the weapon that disarms the dark.

Christ unequivocally proved it.

The cynics and the sarcastics, the critics and the condemning, they speak loud, like they speak the language of this fallen world.
And the diatribes of doubters, dissenters, detractors, this can read like it’s some deep intelligence, the way a tongue, a sharp word, can cut everything back. It means that, I’m told: sarcasm means “to rend the flesh.” But cynics aren’t surgeons and the sarcastic aren’t specialists and why is it so hard to think joy’s a real medicine?
The thing is: The cynics, they can only speak of the dark, of the obvious, and this is not hard. For all it’s supposed sophistication, it’s cynicism that’s simplistic. In a fallen world, how profound is it to see the cracks?
The sages and prophets, the disciples and revolutionaries, they are the ones up on the ramparts, up on the wall pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and to the Blazing God who never sleeps.
The brilliant don’t deny the dark but they are the ones who always seek the light in everything. This is not ignorance. This is imperative: 
“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.“
Always first the eyes. The way we see is the way we’re saved. 

True, there’s no getting around it: There are raw edges everywhere and we’re shattered and serrated and we’d be fools not to moan and bemoan for a doctor. But the Truth is: we have One.
And we lament visceral pain, the way injustice lances and bleeds. But praise God that there is a doctor in the House! And He knows your name and He holds the stars and His girds underneath and He never lets go and He is Joy and He is Light and He is the warrior who defeats the dark.
The language of genuine Biblical lament, this needs learning. But we’re freed from our mother tongue of complaint when we know our Father’s heart.
Light is the radical thing in a dark world.

And nothing of this world wants any of us to live in real joy.
Because Joy is dangerous — it’s igniting and contagious and otherworldly and it wins demon wars. 
And it’s mere ploy to say joy is Pollyanna– because joy is revolutionary: it goes straight against the way this dark world spins.
“But why are they called chinese lanterns?” She climbs out of the ditch behind me.
And I kneel and I show her:

“Because inside ….” and I turn the stem….
“…when everything else dries and withers away, there is this seed – this light inside that will scatter, that will multiply everywhere.”
And she points to the light that breaks through all things broken… 
And we gather the grasses and berries and lanterns into arms and walk home through the woods, through a dying, fallen world, —
nothing stopping even the trees from enflaming joy, all glory.