Were you afraid of the dark as a child? I was…and at certain times and places, I still am. I don’t like to admit it as it sounds so childish. But at my age, who cares if someone laughs at you. That’s their problem! The dark can still grab me with fear once in a while. It stems from when I was in the polio ward at the young age of 2 years– I can still remember at night those old-fashioned shades being pulled down, and the metal sides to our cribs locked into place, and the old globe lights being turned off–and it was dark as dark could be. Sixty-five years later and I can still picture it; and, if I think about it for awhile, I feel like I’m still back there…in the Sister Kenny Ward at Margaret Hague Hospital in Jersey City, New Jersey. Talking with both my sister and brother, they remember not just what happened to me but to the family and to the new neighborhood that we had just moved to the week after that germ found a new home in me, and what the kids at school said and just lots and lots of other consequences from having a highly contagious disease affect one of the children, the baby of the family, their brother. Fast forward ahead many decades now, and Sue and I are staying at a rather funky Bed and Breakfast in rural Connecticut, so we can enjoy some of that unbelievably beautiful fall foliage in New England. We stayed in a little, old cottage attached to an antique shop the owners had which was itself part of the much older colonial home that they lived in. The B&B complex was set way back from the tiny road that ran out front. No street lights there. We had watched a little TV before heading to bed, which was in a nice-sized bedroom at the back of the cottage. We turned the TV off, got into bed and..uh oh, it was so dark you couldn’t see the hand in front of you. I kept looking and no hand, no wife, no anything!! I jumped out of bed in male Fischer-style panic (we’re famous for it!) and after grasp onto and banging into the molding of the bedroom door, stubbing my toe on the ridiculously hard bed frame, I finally got back to that TV and turned it back on and just let it run all night to give but a little light…so I could sleep in peace and quiet (for my wife!). Zechariah 14 is a great chapter about ‘that day’, ‘the day of the Lord’, the coming time when the Lord will right all the wrongs in this crazy world, no more jihadists, no more phony-baloney politicos of any sort or stripe. In verse 7 it says that ‘it will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime–a day known to the Lord. When evening comes there will be light.’ An endless time of perpetual light. As the Prophet Isaiah said, ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned’ (Isaiah 9:2). Like a return to earliest creation, when God created light, even before He separated the light from the dark (Genesis 1: 4). And what did Jesus call Himself in John 8:12?–‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ Jesus lights the way. It’s easy to follow Him when we see His light before us. And His light in our lives remains forever, giving us eternal life! Whatever darkness you or I may fear, open the shades of belief in Jesus, let down the metal sides of those cribs that hold us in, and turn on the light that Jesus shines all around for you and for me! Yes, let there be light… His light in our lives!