When I was younger, I was very afraid of the dark. That was were all the scary things lived. In all my nightmares, I would be in the dark and frightening things would pop out at me.

The dark can still be a scary place for a lot of people. In fact, darkness can be as much of a prison as any four walls or iron bars or locked doors could ever be. Being in darkness means not knowing where you are, feeling alone, feeling lost. For all of us, we were once alienated from God and in spiritual darkness. Some still are. And the dark is a place no one wants to be.

I really like the part in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the ship goes into the Dark Island, a place of perpetual darkness where nightmares come true. At one point, it seems that they are hopelessly lost and will never get out. Lucy whispers a prayer to Aslan and gets this response: “Courage, dear heart.”

That’s what I want to hear when I’m lost in a dark place. I want to know that Jesus knows where I am, even when I don’t, and is on His way to find me and rescue me.

That’s why Jesus came, according to Isaiah 61:1-4 and Luke 4:18-21. He came to proclaim liberty to captives and to set prisoners free. He came to eradicate darkness and be the Light of the World so that those lost in darkness could see their way out.

He did that not just so that we could come into the light. He did that so that we could be little lights in a sea of darkness to show others the way out. To show others that in Christ there is nothing left to fear– no bogeyman, no monster, nothing. That is, nothing that Jesus hasn’t already overcome.

John 1 says that Jesus shined in the dark places and those darkness couldn’t overcome the light. As I’ve said before, all the darkness in the world is no match for the light of one solitary candle. The faithfulness of even one person reflecting the light of Jesus can drive out darkness in any place.

This was a good reminder to me in a sermon I heard, that we can be free from the prison of darkness. In the movie Stardust, when asked what stars do, one of the main characters (who was in fact a star fallen to earth), replies, “What do stars do? They shine!”

May we shine every day in all the places we go to show people that in Jesus there is a way out. If you’re in a dark place, I hope you hear Jesus whispering to you, “Courage, dear heart. Help is on the way.”