Brilliance

Imagine you are in a room. The room has one window. One window that is grimy, dusty, and brown. It lets light in -- barely. This room is well lit though. In fact, there are lights everywhere. Not a single shadow. What use is the light from the window then?

People live their lives in this room, eating, drinking, working, playing, being born, dying. Even as one by one the lights go out, they pretend as if all is well. There’s still enough light to see by. Until there’s not.

As the lights go out, some begin to see that there is light outside of the room. Some think it insignificant , so they remain content with the light of the room, perhaps even trying to fix the lights which have gone out. But some realize the outside light for what it is -- the sun. They know not how bright its light shines, but they know it must be very radiant indeed to be able to shine through the cakes of dirt and dust layered on the window.

The more lights in the room go out, the more people see the hint towards outside brilliance, and they long for it. And when all the lights go out, those who think the light of the window nothing fall into hopelessness and despair, wishing only for the past, when the light of the room was bright. But some hope for the light outside.

Until someone unlocks the door.

The room is just that -- a room. But outside are no walls. There are mountains and oceans, fields and rivers, an endless expanse of beauty and life. And there, also, is the Sun, the Great Light which shines brighter than a thousand thousand lights of any other kind. Those who denied or ignored its existence are shocked by just how silly they were to believe only in the light of the room, but even those who guessed at the Light are undone by the majesty and glory of the More that exists outside of what they have always known. Here the light never goes out, and its brilliance relegates the old lights of the room to obsolete insignificance.