A Day With No Sun

This past weekend, it rained. One of those all day long, pretty much raining hard all day, cold, foggy types of rainy days. It was a perfect day for sweats, Netflix, and cookies. But alas, I got up, went to church, went to a meeting after church and even got gas (which is true adulting, if you ask me). But you better believe the second I got home, I put on sweats and refused to step foot outside again.

The next day it rained in the morning, but the sun came out. A blinding, in your face, bright sun came out. When I leave school most days, the sun is just low enough that it is below my visor. Blinding, I tell you. Blinding.

I thought to myself, that in just one day without the sun, I had forgotten what the sun was like. I had forgotten its power. I had forgotten how differently you feel when the sun is on your face than when rain is falling on your head. I had forgotten how hard it is to see when you’re driving with the sun blaring in your eyes. I had forgotten what all the roads looked like and what nature looked like, not under drooping, wet leaves.

If the sun disappeared forever, Earth would be ok, but only for a very short time. Electricity would sustain us for a short time. But photosynthesis would cease. It would be dark everywhere, all the time. And the whole earth would be very cold. And eventually all of life would cease to exist. Not to mention the sun is what keeps the earth in its orbit, so without it, we would float in space without something (the sun) holding us in our orbit.

We must have the sun.

For a day, we would adjust. Grab some coats and some flashlight and humanity still exists. But then a week goes by, and then a month, and then a year. And we would not be fine. We would be WAY less than fine. We would be frozen and not able to grow food and spinning out of control in the universe.

It reminds me of the importance of food. Skip one meal, and you’re probably ok. Skip a day’s worth, probably still ok. Skip a week’s worth and you’re in trouble. Not to mention what you would be like if you skipped a month’s worth of meals. Our bodies need food to make them work; just like our earth needs light to function.

And you know what – it’s just like our souls. We must have the Son (Matthew 5:14). And we must have Bread (John 6:35). A constant infilling of the Light and the Bread are what make our souls flourish.

Walking away for a day and you may not notice the hunger pang for the Bread of Life. But as time goes on, our souls begin to starve. Our bodies begin to crave. Close your eyes for a day and you might not miss the Light of the World. But soon your eyes will adjust to the darkness around you. Then you will need something to quench the hunger and something to shed light. Something to fill the void. We fill that void with alcohol, sex, success, technology, and more, more, more of what can’t and isn’t designed to fill our soul void. Our soul voids are only filled with Jesus, whose light dispels darkness and whose bread fills to satisfaction.

I don’t want to forget. I don’t want soul amnesia. If my brain can forget the power of the sun in the sky in just one day, then I do not want my soul to forget the power of the Son of God for any length of time.