Darkness Is Losing

You know, there’s 786 million people without clean water in the world today, 25 million people in Africa losing their lives to AIDS, and one in six children going hungry every day. When I hear those stats, I think: is anything we’re doing actually working? And I mean, if it is working, how can we be certain? I might as well not even try to help because, well, I’m just one person. But see, that despair could be solved with a little dose of perspective, a story that tells the truth and not just the wreckage, because the truth is: according to stats, darkness is losing. I repeat: darkness is losing. Okay, you don’t believe me. Did you know since 2000 there are eight million more AIDS patients getting antiviral drugs, every year more than two and a half million less children graves are being dug? Let that sink in. That’s 7,256 more children that are living every day. See, progress is being made. Because justice—it isn’t a gavel and a black robe. It’s setting the world to right. It’s fixing what’s broken. It’s crushing strife. It’s restoring genuine humanness and being an ambassador of light. Because Church, God was willing to die to set this world right, so let that be our cry and why we give our life. But first, justice also isn’t a lot of things. Justice isn’t doing good things simply because they benefit you. It’s not using good causes to build your platform, too. In fact it’s not sexy—it’s messy, and it’s not arbitrary kindness but standing firm for what’s true. I mean, who cares about how much we sing about justice at our shows? Here’s the real question: when was the last time we had a non-Christian in our home? So, real quick, let me tell you what justice is. Justice is throwing the lasso around heaven and pulling it down to earth. It’s loving your neighbor no matter how much it hurts. It’s where we got sit-ins, women saying, “I don’t belong in the kitchen,” pushback of hypocritical religion, and Christians saying, “We will die for these causes if that’s the only way you’ll listen.” See, justice is the Church’s mission. It’s looking at the prince of darkness and saying, “You’re riding a sinking ship because our King is risen. See, the whole point of this poem is to be encouraged that darkness is losing. Jesus is moving. Thanks to you all and the work you’ve been doing, lives are being changed. People are getting clean water, peace is being restored, and people are getting cured. So my plea is, don’t give up. Don’t let up. Let’s stop thinking what we’ve done is enough because new creation is here, yes, and the sun is in the sky, but it’s not over. In fact it’s just sunrise, because the victory has been won, but we aren’t done until with our own eyes we see Revelation 21. Because true justice is bending the world back to how it was created to be. See, we were created for the shalom of Genesis 1 and not Genesis 3. So let’s be God’s agent of reconciliation that everyone sees, and let us never forget the Church has plan A and there is no plan B. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”—John 1:5