Enough Light for the Next Step

“Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path.” – Psalm 119:105

This verse says, your word is a lamp to my path, not the sun to my world: when we hold a lamp in the dark, it only casts the light so far ahead. The Message translates this, “By your words I can see where I’m going; they throw a beam of light on my dark path.” A beam of light. Just enough to see a few steps forward.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to the first day of school with so much still unknown. Normally, we would be in a flurry of back-to-school playdates and teacher meetings and educational nights. We’d be dusting off backpacks and lunch bags and preparing for school run routines. At this point I don’t really know what my kids will actually be doing for school. I don’t know when or for how long they’ll be on screens each day. I’m not sure how our home lessons will fit into that, or how it will look coordinating four different schedules. I’m not even sure which schooling option will end up being the best.

Our school district superintendent wrote recently, “Information shared by the District, including principals, is as good as the day it is issued.” We’ve all had to learn that the hard way, I think: that we can’t really know anything for sure these days. We can’t expect to see too far ahead. And yet this is the way that God’s word works in our lives: it gives just enough light for the next step. There is something about the revelation and movement of the Christian walk that works exactly this way—that doesn’t tell us what the future holds, only what we have to do in the coming hour or day. “The art of living,” Nouwen writes, “is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let’s rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.”